Kristin Lunz Trujillo grew up proud of her family’s way of life. Despite being physically close to home, Ms. Lunz Trujillo was surprised by how foreign her upbringing seemed at the college. When an art history teacher asked students which famous paintings they’d seen in person, Ms. Lunz Trujillo stayed quiet, because she had never been to an art museum. This sense of cultural alienation molded her research when she became a political scientist: What is rural identity? This year, Ms. Lunz Trujillo, now an assistant professor at the University of South Carolina, was reading a new, best-selling book that cited her research to explore those same questions.

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Persons: Kristin Lunz Trujillo, Lunz Trujillo Organizations: University of South Locations: Carleton, Minnesota, University of South Carolina