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Appalachian Studies
Broad studies, academic programs, bibliographies
Appalachian Symposium 2015 [fifteen audio files]. 2015. Loyal Jones Appalachian Center, Berea, Ky., September 9-10. “The largest-ever gathering of the region’s best known writers. Two days of public conversations about literature, Appalachia, and much more on the historic campus of Berea College.” SESSIONS. SEPTEMBER 9: Welcome / Silas House and Chad Berry. Keynote One: Appalachia Is Our Fate / bell hooks (28:20 min.) -- Where I’m From: Dialect and Accepted Classism / Gwyn Hyman Rubio, Pam Duncan, Amy Greene, Crystal Wilkinson (49:59 min.) -- The Place Gives Rise to the Spirit: The Impact of Place on Appalachian Writers and Writing / Anne Shelby, Julia Watts, Frank X Walker (36:59) -- The Personal and the Political: Is Activism an Inherent Part of Writing About This Place and Its People? / Frank X Walker, Denise Giardina (39:28 min.) -- Musical Interlude—Concert: One of the region’s best singer-songwriters offers us a short concert of beautifully crafted music (44:07 min.) / Caroline Herring -- Country Music and Appalachian Literature (38:51 min.) / Silas House, Marianne Worthington, Jason Howard, Jesse Graves. SEPTEMBER 10: The Nature of Loss: Displacement in Appalachian Literature (38:53 min.) / Lisa Parker, Jane Hicks, Maurice Manning, Denise Giardina -- Writing the New Millennium (43:16 min.) / Amy Greene, Charles Dodd White, Glenn Taylor, Robert Gipe -- We’re Here: Diversity in Appalachian Lit (36:45 min.) / Crystal Wilkinson, Julia Watts, Jason Howard, Sam Gleaves -- Country Badassery: Gender Roles in Appalachian Literature (47:55 min.) / Marianne Worthington, Ron Houchin, Richard Hague -- Sam Gleaves introduces Matt Parsons, who sings two original songs (10:11 min.) / Matt Parsons -- Keynote Two: The Irony of Appalachian Literature (49:06 min.) / Maurice Manning -- To Tell the Truth: Writing Creative Nonfiction in a Culture of Secrets and Polite Denial (32:06 min.) / Erik Reece, Anne Shelby, Jason Howard, Crystal Wilkinson -- A Public Conversation Between Legends (21:43 min.) / Loyal Jones and Gurney Norman. https://www.berea.edu/appalachian-center/appalachian-symposium-2015/.
Berry, Chad, Phillip J. Obermiller, and Shaunna L. Scott, ed. 2015. Studying Appalachian Studies: Making the Path by Walking [8 essays]. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 224 pp. Weatherford Award winner for nonfiction. Contributors: Chris Baker, Chad Berry, Donald Edward Davis, Amanda Fickey, Chris Green, Erica Abrams Locklear, Phillip J. Obermiller, Douglas Reichert Powell, Michael Samers, Shaunna L. Scott, and Barbara Ellen Smith. “Essayists argue for Appalachian Studies’ integration with kindred fields like African American studies, women’s studies, and Southern studies, and they urge those involved in the field to globalize the perspective of Appalachian Studies; to commit to continued applied, participatory action, and community-based research; to embrace more fully the field’s capacity for bringing about social justice; to advocate for a more accurate understanding of Appalachia and its people; and to understand and overcome the obstacles interdisciplinary studies face in the social and institutional construction of knowledge.”
Berry, Chad, Shaunna L. Scott, and Phillip J. Obermiller. 2015. “Reconsidering Appalachian Studies.” Southern Spaces, 9 June. 1,971 words. “In an excerpt from Studying Appalachian Studies: Making the Path by Walking(University of Illinois Press, 2015), editors Chad Berry, Phillip J. Obermiller, and Shaunna L. Scott challenge the field’s status quo and reflect on the scholarly, artistic, activist, educational, and practical endeavor known as Appalachian Studies. In these ‘Final Thoughts,’ the editors advocate for a more accurate and contemporary understanding of Appalachia and its scholarly study.” Recommended text and web resources. http://southernspaces.org/2015/reconsidering-appalachian-studies.
Best of Thirty Years, Part I (1984-1999). 2015. Special issue, Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine 30, no. 2 (Winter): 1-72. Contents: ARTICLES. Medal of Honor / Fred Chappell (vol. 4: no. 3) -- Old men / Abraham Verghese, M.D. (6:1) -- Wilma Dykeman: an interview / Sandra L. Ballard (6:2) -- The Cherokee: hungry for the dance / Jane Harris Woodside (6:3) -- Maxine Waller: the making of a community organizer / Helen Matthews Lewis (7:1) -- Ten months that shook the coalfields: women’s stories from the Pittston Strike / Marat Moore (7:3) -- Listen to the music in the air: early radio days in East Tennessee / Richard Blaustein (8:3) -- The 2 Jacks: Stanley Robertson & Ray Hicks / Barbara McDermitt (9:2) -- From Sabbath sin to gridiron evangelism: sports and religion in Southern Appalachia / Robert J. Higgs (9:3) -- An “other” consciousness / Gurney Norman (11:1) -- Contradiction, compromise, & commitment: the Jews of Beckley, West Virginia / Deborah Weiner & Maryanne Reed (13:3) -- The gift of tongues / Robert Morgan (13:3) -- From medicine shows to Hee Haw: comedy & country music / Loyal Jones (14:1) -- POETRY. An Indian walks in me: credo / Marilou Awiakta (3:3) -- Cats / Jim Wayne Miller (9:3) -- A First Amendment poem / Jo Carson (10:3) -- My father doesn’t tell stories / Linda Parsons (11:2) -- Flea market / Jeff Daniel Marion (14:1) -- BOOK REVIEWS. Vein of Words, by Jim Wayne Miller / Fred Waage (2:3) -- Storming Heaven, by Denise Giardina / Laurie Lindberg (5:1) -- Foxfire Reconsidered: A Twenty-Five Year Experiment in Progressive Education, by John Puckett / Richard Blaustein (6:2) -- First and Last Words, by Fred Chappell / Jim Wayne Miller (6:3) -- Selu: Seeking the Corn Mother’s Wisdom, by Marilou Awiakta / Rupert Cutler (12:1) -- Hillbillyland: What the Movies Did to the Mountains and What the Mountains Did to the Movies, by J. W. Williamson / Edward D. C. Campbell, Jr. (13:2) -- Mountain Country Cooking: A Gathering of the Best Recipes from the Smokies to the Blue Ridge, by Mark F. Sohn / Peggy Lewis Smith (15:1).
Best of Thirty Years, Part II (2000-2014). 2015. Special issue, Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine 31, no. 1 (Summer): 1-64. Contents: ARTICLES. Mountaintop removal: necessity or nightmare? / Rudy Abramson (vol. 18: no. 3) -- Raised to leave / Lee Smith (19:1) -- The hand that wrote The Dollmaker: a tribute to Harriette Arnow / Silas House (19:3) -- Writing on Appalachia: beauty, strength, and stereotype / Rick Bragg (21:1) -- Sago / Fred Sauceman (22:1) -- Mountain miracles: the Crossnore School story / Randy Sanders (22:2) -- Growing greasy cut-shorts / Bill Best (23:1) -- Goose / Katie Fallon (23:2) -- Searching for Sut: solving the mystery of George Washington Harris’s gravesite / M. Thomas Inge (24:2) -- The Stoney Creek Primitive Baptist Associational Meeting and Dinner on the Ground / Martha Whaley (25:1) -- The spirit of humanity in Appalachia / Roberta Herrin (25:2) -- Still like I left it / Michael Joslin (25:2) -- Up on the Billy / Elizabeth Hunter (26:1) -- Willie the philologist / Steve Rasnic Tem (26:2) -- The voice of the turtle returns, sweet and clear / Dot Jackson (27:1) -- Exotic dancing and the odds for a happily ever after / Edwina Pendarvis (27:2) -- Looking for a home / Maggie McKinney (28:1) -- Asia-lachia / Berlin Fang (28:2) -- Printer’s ink and blood / Wayne Winkler (29:1) -- POEMS. 1953 / Ron Rash (17:1) -- Fiddle / James Still (18:2) -- Global economy / George Ella Lyon (23:1) -- Of Jíbaros and Hillbillies / Ricardo Nazario y Colón (28:1) -- Road to Arcadia / Robert Morgan (29:2) -- BOOK REVIEWS. Gap Creek, by Robert Morgan / Pat Arnow (18:1) -- Prodigal Summer, by Barbara Kingsolver / Kathy Griffith Fish (18:3) -- The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume III: Contemporary Appalachia, ed. Jesse Graves, Paul Ruffin, William Wright / Ernest Lee (28:1).
Blackburn, Jessie. 2014. “[E]ppalachia: Rural Ethos, Online Discourse, and Cyber-Frontiers.” Appalachian Journal 41, no. 3-4 (Spring-Summer): 214-230. “The Ideology of Globalization and Cyber-Appalachian Rhetoric” .... “Which truth(s) or realities will make their way off of Main Street and onto the home page? Who is authoring this new reality? Who is being rendered invisible? Who is doing the speaking and--as always--who is being spoken for?”
Brown, Jo. B., comp. 2013. “Annual Bibliography, 2012.” Journal of Appalachian Studies 19,
no. 1-2 (Spring-Fall): 151-213.
Burriss, Theresa L., and Patricia M. Gantt, ed. 2013. Appalachia in the Classroom: Teaching the Region [14 essays]. Series in Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in Appalachia. Athens: Ohio University Press. 280 pp. Contents: PART ONE: CREATIVE TEACHING OF APPALACHIAN HISTORY. Intro to Appalachian Studies: navigating myths of Appalachian exceptionalism / Emily Satterwhite -- Listening to Black Appalachian laundrywomen: teaching with photographs, letters, diaries, and lost voices / Elizabeth S.D. Engelhardt -- The Southern Highlands according to Hollywood: teaching Appalachian history through film / John C. Inscoe -- PART TWO: APPALACHIAN LITERATURE AND FOLKTALES IN AND OUT OF THE CLASSROOM. Building bridges with Ron Rash’s The World Made Straight: results from one university and high school partnership / Erica Abrams Locklear -- The feast hall, the arsenal, and the mirror: teaching literature to students at risk / Jeff Mann -- I hear Appalachia singing: teaching Appalachian literature in a general education American literature course / Linda Tate -- “Way back yonder” but not so far away: teaching Appalachian folktales / Tina L. Hanlon -- PART THREE: THE NOVEL IN APPALACHIA. Teaching modern Appalachia in Wilma Dykeman’s The Far Family / Patricia M. Gantt -- Fred Chappell’s I Am One of You Forever as a subject for literary analysis and an alternative image of mid-twentieth-century Appalachia / Ricky L. Cox -- Startling morals: teaching ecofiction with Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer / Felicia Mitchell -- PART FOUR: APPALACHIAN POETRY AND PROSE. Appalachian poetry: a field guide for teachers / R. Parks Lanier Jr. -- From Harlem home to Affrilachia: teaching the literary journey / Theresa L. Burriss -- Teaching the poetry and prose of Marilou Awiakta / Grace Toney Edwards -- Toward “crystal-tight arrays”: teaching the evolving art of Robert Morgan’s poetry / Robert M. West.
Cochran, Dana Stoker. 2015. “Still: The Journal.” Journal of Appalachian Studies 21, no. 2 (Fall): 290-292. Media review of Still: The Journal, online regional literary journal founded in 2009 and edited by Silas House, Marianne Worthington, and Karen McElmurray. http//:stilljournal.net.
Creadick, Anna. 2013. “The AppalJ of My Eye: From Appalachian Studies to American Studies, and Back.” Appalachian Journal 40, no. 3-4 (Summer-Spring): 166-172. The author ponders these two intertwined “landscapes.” “Everything about America is present in Appalachia, just less hidden. And the ‘cutting edge’ of American Studies is certainly in the pages of the Appalachian Journal.”
Crosby, Anthony, Jr., Elizabeth Keller, and Chris Ogden, comp. 2014. Journal of the Alleghenies INDEX: 1963-2014. Frostburg, Md.: Council of the Alleghenies. 72 pp. Author and subject index to fifty years (vols. 1-50) of this local history journal covering the Allegheny Mountain Highlands of of Md., Pa., and W. Va.
Evans, Mari-Lynn, Holly George-Warren, and Robert Santelli, ed. 2004 [2013]. The Appalachians: America’s First and Last Frontier [companion to the 3-part PBS series]. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press. 256 pp. Originally published, New York: Random House.
Fisher, Steve, and others. 2014. “Celebration Honoring Patricia D. Beaver, On Her Retirement.” Appalachian Journal 41, no. 3-4 (Spring-Summer): 264-273, 275-281. Remarks by Steve Fisher, Maggie McFadden, Susan Keefe, Robert Gipe, Robert White, Susannah White, Mark Freed, John Inscoe, Grace Toney Edwards, Gurney Norman, and Jerry Wayne Williamson. “Patricia Beaver joined the faculty at Appalachian State University in 1974. She was the founding director of ASU’s Center for Appalachian Studies, which she led for more than two decades (1979-84, 1997-2013).”
Green, Chris, and Erica Abrams Locklear. 2015. “Writing Appalachia: Intersections, Missed Connections, and Future Work.” Chap. 3 in Studying Appalachian Studies: Making the Path by Walking, ed. C. Berry, P. Obermiller, and S. Scott, 62-87. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Green and Locklear “appraise developments in Appalachian literature, including fiction, folklore, poetry, and drama, since the nineteenth century.”
House, Silas. 2014. “Our Secret Places in the Waiting World: or, A Conscious Heart, Continued.” Journal of Appalachian Studies 20, no. 2 (Fall): 103-121, plus Keynote Responses, 122-153. Transcript of keynote speech delivered at 37th Annual Appalachian Studies Conference, Marshall University, Huntington, W. Va., March 28-30, 2014. Topics include homophobia and racism; also included in the text are: House’s poem, “This Is My Heart for You,” and a scene from his play of the same title; Bianca Spriggs’s poem, “My Kinda Woman”; and Jeff Mann’s poem, “Yellow-Eye Beans.” (See also the YouTube video of the speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR7A69yOL-k). KEYNOTE RESPONSES: Call and response—taking a stand / bell hooks -- Risk, religion, and invisibility / Jeff Mann -- Half acceptance hinders economic transition / Ivy Brashear -- Stay here anyway / Shea Daniels -- Rainbow sign / Sam Gleaves -- The power of conversation / Pam McMichael -- In the howling wind / Carrie Nobel Kline -- Claiming a place on Earth; the conscious heart of Silas House / Fenton Johnson.
House, Silas. 2014. “Our Secret Places in the Waiting World: Becoming a New Appalachia.” Filmed March 28. YouTube video, 1:04:33. Keynote address at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Appalachian Studies Conference, Marshall University, Huntington, W. Va., challenging the community to engage in conversation about homophobia, racism, discrimination, and hate crimes in the region. House’s call-to-action ends with Sam Gleaves leading a hymn sing of “We’ll Camp a Little While in the Wilderness,” and “God Gave Noah the Rainbow Sign.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR7A69yOL-k.
Hyde, Gene. 2014. “Appalachian Heritage.” Journal of Appalachian Studies 20, no. 2 (Fall): 288-290. Media review of newly designed website for Appalachian Heritage, the online literary journal published by Loyal Jones Appalachian Center, Berea College, and edited by Jason Howard. http://appalachiancenter.net. Hyde also recognizes the nineteen-seventies founding of Appalachian Journal, and Journal of Appalachian Studies(which began as Proceedings of the Annual Appalachian Studies Conference and was renamed in 1989).
Obermiller, Phillip J., and Shaunna L. Scott. 2015. “Studying Appalachia: Critical Reflections.” Chap. 6 in Studying Appalachian Studies: Making the Path by Walking, ed. C. Berry, P. Obermiller, and S. Scott, 141-167. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. “This chapter seeks to identify [over a 40-year period] both strengths and weaknesses in the field of Appalachian studies, its insights and contributions, as well as its blind spots and omissions.”
Obermiller, Phillip J., and Michael E. Maloney. 2016. “The Uses and Misuses of Appalachian Culture.” Journal of Appalachian Studies 22, no. 1 (Spring): 103-112. “Appalachian scholars and activists should emphasize the variety in the Appalachian heritages of the diverse people in Appalachia .... we do not want to confine the concept of Appalachian heritage to cultural traits or values or behaviors.”
Pearson, Stephen. 2013. “‘The Last Bastion of Colonialism’: Appalachian Settler Colonialism and Self-Indigenization.” American Indian Culture & Research Journal 37, no. 2: 165-184. “The work of Harry Caudill, Helen Lewis, Chris Irwin, and others—Appalachian studies scholars and activists who have advanced the colonialism model—will provide the main examples of settler indigenization I examine in this essay.”
Satterwhite, Emily. 2013. “Intro to Appalachian Studies: Navigating Myths of Appalachian Exceptionalism.” Chap. 1 in Appalachia in the Classroom: Teaching the Region, ed. T. Burriss and P. Gantt, 3-32. Athens: Ohio University Press.
Schumann, William R., and Rebecca Adkins Fletcher, ed. 2016. Appalachia Revisited: New Perspectives on Place, Tradition, and Progress. Place Matters: New Directions in Appalachian Studies series. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. 318 pp. Contents: Introduction: Place and Place-Making in Appalachia / William Schumann -- PART 1: RACE, ETHNICITY, AND GENDER. 1. Revisiting Appalachia, Revisiting Self / Kathryn L. Duvall, Kelly A. Dorgan, and Sadie P. Hutson -- 2. Carolina Chocolate Drops: Performative Expressions and Reception of Affrilachian Identity / Yunina Barbour-Payne -- 3. Beyond a Wife’s Perspective on Politics: One Woman’s Expression of Identity in Western North Carolina in the Postwar Period / Amanda Zeddy -- 4. Intersections of Appalachian Identity / Anna Rachel Terman -- PART 2: LANGUAGE, RHETORIC, AND LITERACY. 5. Appalachia Beyond the Mountains: Ethical, Community-Based Research in Urban Appalachian Neighborhoods / Kathryn Trauth Taylor -- 6. Digital Rhetorics of Appalachia and the Cultural Studies Classroom / Jessica Blackburn -- 7. Continuity and Change of English Consonants in Appalachia / Kirk Hazen, Jordan Lovejoy, Jaclyn Daugherty,and Madeline Vandevender -- PART 3: ECONOMY AND ENVIRONMENT. 8. Frackonomics / Jacqueline Yahn -- 9. Revisiting Appalachian Icons in the Production and Consumption of Tourist Art / Kristin Kant-Byers -- 10. From the Coal Mine to the Prison Yard: The Human Cost of Appalachia’s New Economy / Melissa Ooten and Jason Sawyer -- 11. Walking the Fence Line of the Crooked Road: Engaging in the Marketplace of Tourism while Empowering a Place-Based Civic Commons / Anita Puckett -- PART 4: ENGAGEMENT. 12. “No One’s Ever Talked to Us Before”: Participatory Approaches and Economic Development in Rural Appalachian Communities / Tim Ezzell -- 13. Strength in Numbers: The Federation of Appalachian Housing Enterprises / Diane N. Loeffler and Jim King -- 14. When Collaboration Leads to Action: Collecting and Making History in a Deep South State / Mark Wilson -- 15. Participation and Transformation in Twenty-First-Century Appalachian Scholarship / Gabriel A. Piser -- (Re)introduction: The Global Neighborhoods of Appalachian Studies / Rebecca Adkins Fletcher -- Appendix: Teaching Exercises.
Scott, Shaunna L., Phillip J. Obermiller, and Chad Berry. 2015. “Making Appalachia: Interdisciplinary Fields and Appalachian Studies.” Chap. 1 in Studying Appalachian Studies: Making the Path by Walking, ed. C. Berry, P. Obermiller, and S. Scott, 8-41. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. The editors analyze “Appalachian studies in comparison to four other interdisciplinary fields that focus on either regional geography or identity and oppression, such as gender, race, and class: womens’s studies, African American studies, New West studies, and Pacific Islands studies.”
Scott, Shaunna L., Phillip J. Obermiller, and Chad Berry. 2015. “Reconsidering Appalachian Studies.” Chap. 8 in Studying Appalachian Studies: Making the Path by Walking, ed. C. Berry, P. Obermiller, and S. Scott, 194-206. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. This concluding chapter “provides a brief overview of the field’s ‘prehistorical’ era, attempting to answer the question: How might institutions of higher education avoid disciplinary rigidity and blind spots an order to encourage interdisciplinary area studies.”
Smith, Barbara Ellen. 2015. “Representing Appalachia: The Impossible Necessity of Appalachian Studies.” Chap. 2 in Studying Appalachian Studies: Making the Path by Walking, ed. C. Berry, P. Obermiller, and S. Scott, 42-61. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. “...uses feminist theory as a lens to examine the interaction of gender, sexuality, class, and race with identifying and being identified as Appalachian.”
Weaver, Russell, and Chris Holtkamp. 2016. “Determinants of Appalachian Identity: Using Vernacular Traces to Study Cultural Geographies of an American Region.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 106, no. 1: 203-221. Maps, figures.