This paper presents a partial mapping of the field of rural literacies that has emerged following the publication of Edmondson's "Prairie Town" (2003) and Donehower et al.'s "Rural Literacies" (2007). These two texts presented the idea that rural places and spaces can be used to think about literacy practices in the context of larger educational and regional/community development issues. But the question remains, what exactly is rural literacy? Our answer relates to the kinds of questions that have been taken up by literacy studies scholars working in rural contexts over the past decade. In this paper we examine a number of contemporary studies of literacy/literacies in rural contexts and offer a framework for the analysis of rural literacies scholarship.