Author: David E. WhisnantPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Appalachian Region
Languages : en
Pages : 324
Book Description
Appalachia Inside Out: Conflict and change
Author: Robert J. HiggsPublisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press
ISBN: 9780870498749
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 380
Book Description
An anthology of Appalachia writings.
Modernizing the Mountaineer
Author: David E. WhisnantPublisher: Univ Tennessee Press
ISBN: 9780870498237
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 310
Book Description
David Whisnant focuses upon public and private social and economic development efforts in Appalachia from the close of the nineteenth century through the early 1970s. He explores their diverse origins, their many ways of assessing and relating to the problems and people of the region, and above all the cultural politics that shaped them
Uneven Ground
Author: Ronald D EllerPublisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813173205
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 393
Book Description
Appalachia has played a complex and often contradictory role in the unfolding of American history. Created by urban journalists in the years following the Civil War, the idea of Appalachia provided a counterpoint to emerging definitions of progress. Early-twentieth-century critics of modernity saw the region as a remnant of frontier life, a reflection of simpler times that should be preserved and protected. However, supporters of development and of the growth of material production, consumption, and technology decried what they perceived as the isolation and backwardness of the place and sought to "uplift" the mountain people through education and industrialization. Ronald D Eller has worked with local leaders, state policymakers, and national planners to translate the lessons of private industrial-development history into public policy affecting the region. In Uneven Ground: Appalachia since 1945, Eller examines the politics of development in Appalachia since World War II with an eye toward exploring the idea of progress as it has evolved in modern America. Appalachia's struggle to overcome poverty, to live in harmony with the land, and to respect the diversity of cultures and the value of community is also an American story. In the end, Eller concludes, "Appalachia was not different from the rest of America; it was in fact a mirror of what the nation was becoming."
Appalachia on Our Mind
Author: Henry D. ShapiroPublisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469617242
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 399
Book Description
Appalachia on Our Mind is not a history of Appalachia. It is rather a history of the American idea of Appalachia. The author argues that the emergence of this idea has little to do with the realities of mountain life but was the result of a need to reconcile the "otherness" of Appalachia, as decribed by local-color writers, tourists, and home missionaries, with assumptions about the nature of America and American civilization. Between 1870 and 1900, it became clear that the existence of the "strange land and peculiar people" of the southern mountains challenged dominant notions about the basic homogeneity of the American people and the progress of the United States toward achiving a uniform national civilization. Some people attempted to explain Appalachian otherness as normal and natural -- no exception to the rule of progress. Others attempted the practical integration of Appalachia into America through philanthropic work. In the twentieth century, however, still other people began questioning their assumptions about the characteristics of American civilization itself, ultimately defining Appalachia as a region in a nation of regions and the mountaineers as a people in a nation of peoples. In his skillful examination of the "invention" of the idea of Appalachia and its impact on American thought and action during the early twentieth century, Mr. Shapiro analyzes the following: the "discovery" of Appalachia as a field for fiction by the local-color writers and as a field for benevolent work by the home missionaries of the northern Protestant churches; the emergence of the "problem" of Appalachia and attempts to solve it through explanation and social action; the articulation of a regionalist definition of Appalachia and the establishment of instituions that reinforced that definition; the impact of that regionalistic definition of Appalachia on the conduct of systematic benevolence, expecially in the context of the debate over child-labor restriction and the transformation of philanthropy into community work; and the attempt to discover the bases for an indigenous mountain culture in handicrafts, folksong, and folkdance.
Authority and the Mountaineer in Cormac McCarthy's Appalachia
Author: Gabe RikardPublisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476603472
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 250
Book Description
The author uses theories on power, resistance and discipline developed by Michel Foucault to analyze the interactions of mountaineers and the authorities who have attempted to "modernize" them. The book shows how McCarthy manipulates Appalachian images while engaging in a form of archeology of Appalachian constructs. Initially the book explores the interplay of the dominance/resistance duality. Roads provided ways into the mountains for industry and ways out for the mountaineer, cotton mill villages and regional cities served as "disciplined" destinations for Appalachian out-migrants. McCarthy's character Lester Ballard (Child of God) represents the epitome of hillbilly delinquency. The author explains how the iconic image of the mountaineer--a notion cultivated by fiction writers, benevolent organizations, and academics--"othered" the mountain people as deviants. The book ends by considering the ways in which The Road returns to the rhetorical and geographical region of his early work, and how it fits into McCarthy's Appalachian oeuvre.
Reformers to Radicals
Author: Thomas KiffmeyerPublisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813173086
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321
Book Description
In his inaugural address, President John F. Kennedy challenged Americans to do something for their country. Thousands of young people answered his call, launching an era of flourishing social activism that eclipsed any in U.S. history. Citizens rallied behind an endless variety of social justice organizations to change the country's social and political landscape. As these social movements gained momentum, the severe poverty of the Appalachian region attracted the attention of many spirited young Americans. In 1964, a group of them formed the Appalachian Volunteers, an organization intent on eradicating poverty in eastern Kentucky and the rest of the Southern mountains. In Reformers to Radicals: The Appalachian Volunteers and the War on Poverty, Thomas Kiffmeyer documents the history of this organization as their youthful enthusiasm led to radicalism and controversy. Known informally as the AVs, these reformers sought to improve the everyday lives of the Appalachian poor while also making strides toward lasting economic change in the region. Considering themselves "poverty warriors," the AVs helped residents by refurbishing schools and homes and by offering much-needed educational opportunities, including job training and remedial academic instruction. Their efforts brought temporary relief to the Appalachian poor, but controversy was soon to follow. Within two years of the group's formation, they faced nationwide accusations that they were "seditious" and "un-American." Kiffmeyer explains how these activists, who worked for a worthy cause, ignited a firestorm of public criticism that ultimately caused their mission to fail. Before the decade was over, the Volunteers had lost the support of the federal and state governments and of many Appalachian people—an irreversible setback that caused the group to disband in 1970. The Appalachian Volunteers' failure was caused by multiple factors. They were overtly political, attracting divisive reactions from local and state governments. They were indecisive in defining the true nature of their cause, creating dissension within the group's ranks. They were engaged in a struggle to "integrate" the poor into mainstream American culture, which alienated the AVs from many of the very people they sought to help. They were also caught up in the unrest of the civil rights and anti–Vietnam War movements, which distracted them from their core mission. Reformers to Radicals chronicles a critical era in Appalachian history while also investigating the impact the 1960s' reform attitude had on one part of a broader movement in the United States. Kiffmeyer revisits an era in which idealistic young Americans, spurred on by President Kennedy's call to action, set out to remake America.
Hillbilly Highway
Author: Max FraserPublisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691250294
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336
Book Description
The largely untold story of the great migration of white southerners to the industrial Midwest and its profound and enduring political and social consequences Over the first two-thirds of the twentieth century, as many as eight million whites left the economically depressed southern countryside and migrated to the booming factory towns and cities of the industrial Midwest in search of work. The "hillbilly highway" was one of the largest internal relocations of poor and working people in American history, yet it has largely escaped close study by historians. In Hillbilly Highway, Max Fraser recovers the long-overlooked story of this massive demographic event and reveals how it has profoundly influenced American history and culture—from the modern industrial labor movement and the postwar urban crisis to the rise of today’s white working-class conservatives. The book draws on a diverse range of sources—from government reports, industry archives, and union records to novels, memoirs, oral histories, and country music—to narrate the distinctive class experience that unfolded across the Transappalachian migration during these critical decades. As the migration became a terrain of both social advancement and marginalization, it knit together white working-class communities across the Upper South and the Midwest—bringing into being a new cultural region that remains a contested battleground in American politics to the present. The compelling story of an important and neglected chapter in American history, Hillbilly Highway upends conventional wisdom about the enduring political and cultural consequences of the great migration of white southerners in the twentieth century.
Fighting Back in Appalachia
Author: Stephen FisherPublisher: Temple University Press
ISBN: 9781439901571
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 382
Book Description
Citizen resistance and struggle in Appalachia since 1960.
Music and the Making of a New South
Author: Gavin James CampbellPublisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807863351
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 244
Book Description
Startled by rapid social changes at the turn of the twentieth century, citizens of Atlanta wrestled with fears about the future of race relations, the shape of gender roles, the impact of social class, and the meaning of regional identity in a New South. Gavin James Campbell demonstrates how these anxieties were played out in Atlanta's popular musical entertainment. Examining the period from 1890 to 1925, Campbell focuses on three popular musical institutions: the New York Metropolitan Opera (which visited Atlanta each year), the Colored Music Festival, and the Georgia Old-Time Fiddlers' Convention. White and black audiences charged these events with deep significance, Campbell argues, turning an evening's entertainment into a struggle between rival claimants for the New South's soul. Opera, spirituals, and fiddling became popular not just because they were entertaining, but also because audiences found them flexible enough to accommodate a variety of competing responses to the challenges of making a New South. Campbell shows how attempts to inscribe music with a single, public, fixed meaning were connected to much larger struggles over the distribution of social, political, cultural, and economic power. Attitudes about music extended beyond the concert hall to simultaneously enrich and impoverish both the region and the nation that these New Southerners struggled to create.
Women of the Mountain South
Author: Connie Park RicePublisher: Ohio University Press
ISBN: 0821445227
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 444
Book Description
Scholars of southern Appalachia have largely focused their research on men, particularly white men. While there have been a few important studies of Appalachian women, no one book has offered a broad overview across time and place. With this collection, editors Connie Park Rice and Marie Tedesco redress this imbalance, telling the stories of these women and calling attention to the varied backgrounds of those who call the mountains home. The essays of Women of the Mountain South debunk the entrenched stereotype of Appalachian women as poor and white, and shine a long-overdue spotlight on women too often neglected in the history of the region. Each author focuses on a particular individual or group, but together they illustrate the diversity of women who live in the region and the depth of their life experiences. The Mountain South has been home to Native American, African American, Latina, and white women, both rich and poor. Civil rights and gay rights advocates, environmental and labor activists, prostitutes, and coal miners—all have lived in the place called the Mountain South and enriched its history and culture.