Ralph Lister explains how the world of culture is invited into the rural through touring projects and how the performing arts can transcend themselves by breaking urban boundaries in the search for new publics. As artists develop meaningful relationships with rural dwellers, art-making recovers a deep social function that may no longer find an effective expression conduit in the city.

Article published on EuropeNow which is an online monthly journal, with a blog that publishes weekly. It features research, criticism, and journalism on Europe alongside literary nonfiction, fiction, poetry, translations, and visual art from or concerning Europe.

The special feature of the current month is dedicated to Rurality in Europe.

This special feature is an attempt at remodeling disciplinary epistemologies and tasking the field of European studies to remedy this lag. It seeks to encourage a more engaged representation of rural areas and rural populations in the study of Europe and to interrogate how interdisciplinary rural scholarship and its interconnecting realms of inquiry can help frame key questions about contemporary Europe that transcend the boundaries of the rural. Through their respective examinations of a particular rural topic, contributors in this feature not only delve into specific and often place-based issues, but also help to delineate new research paths that disrupt established assumptions in European studies, showing that the rural matters in seeking solutions to the always shifting global challenges today’s Europe faces.

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