Rural students’ K-12 schooling experiences are influenced by discourses of learning to leave, which perpetuate harmful myths that rural students must leave their home communities to find success. These discourses also shape rural students’ transitions to higher education. Study abroad is a high-impact educational practice that has documented benefits for rural students’ positive college experiences. However, study abroad experiences can perpetuate the same discourses of leaving, further contributing to rural outmigration. Instead, this research wonders how study abroad might be a tool of rural sustainability. This presentation shares insights into three rural students’ experiences in a rural-focused, critical place-based study abroad program in Southern Switzerland and Northern Italy in March 2025. These women’s photodocumentation demonstrated that their rural backgrounds and relationships to place functioned as a juxtaposition against which all other place-based discourses were measured. This consistent reflexivity nuanced their perspectives on rurality and rooted them firmly in their rural homeplaces. These rural visual literacies suggest rural-focused, critical place-based study abroad’s potential as a tool for rural sustainability.
