Death and Dying in Central Appalachia PDF Download

Author: James K. Crissman
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 9780252063558
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
James Crissman explores cultural traits related to death and dying in Appalachian sections of Tennessee, Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, and West Virginia, showing how they have changed since the 1600s. Relying on archival materials, almost forty photographs, and interviews with more than 400 mountain dwellers, Crissman focuses on the importance of family and "neighborliness" in mountain society. Written for both scholarly and general audiences, the book contains sections on the death watch, body preparation, selection or construction of a coffin or casket, digging the grave by hand, the wake, the funeral, and other topics. Crissman then demonstrates how technology and the encroachment of American society have turned these vital traditions into the disappearing practices of the past.

Author: Susan Emley Keefe
Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press
ISBN: 9781572333338
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
Health and human service practitioners who work in Appalachia know that the typical “textbook” methods for dealing with clients often have little relevance in the context of Appalachian culture. Despite confronting behavior and values different from those of mainstream America, these professionals may be instructed to follow organizational mandates that are ineffective in mountain communities, subsequently drawing criticism from their clients for practices that are deemed insensitive or controversial. In Appalachian Cultural Competency, Susan E. Keefe has assembled fifteen essays by a multidisciplinary set of scholars and professionals, many nationally renowned for their work in the field of Appalachian studies. Together, these authors argue for the development of a cultural model of practice based on respect for local knowledge, the value of community diversity, and collaboration between professionals and local communities, groups, and individuals. The essays address issues of both practical and theoretical interest, from understanding rural mountain speech to tailoring mental health therapies for Appalachian clients. Other topics include employee assistance programs for Appalachian working-class women, ways of promoting wellness among the Eastern Cherokees, and understanding Appalachian death practices.Keefe advocates an approach to delivering health and social services that both acknowledges and responds to regional differences without casting judgments or creating damaging stereotypes and hierarchies. Often, she observes, the “reflexive” approach she advocates runs counter to formal professional training that is more suited to urban and non-Appalachian contexts. Health care professionals, mental health therapists, social workers, ministers, and others in social services will benefit from the specific cultural knowledge offered by contributors, illustrated by case studies in a myriad of fields and situations. Grounded in real, tested strategies—and illustrated clearly through the authors’ experiences—Appalachian Cultural Competency is an invaluable sourcebook, stressing the importance of cultural understanding between professionals and the Appalachian people they serve.

Author: Amanda Held Opelt
Publisher: Worthy Books
ISBN: 1546001913
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
In a raw and inspiring reflection on grief--selected by Publishers Weekly as one of the best books of the year--a mourning sister processes her personal story of loss by exploring the history of bereavement customs.​ When Amanda Held Opelt suffered a season of loss—including three miscarriages and the unexpected death of her sister, New York Times bestselling writer Rachel Held Evans—she was confronted with sorrow she didn't know to how face. Opelt struggled to process her grief and accept the reality of the pain in the world. She also wrestled with some unexpectedly difficult questions: What does it mean to truly grieve and to grieve well? Why is it so hard to move on? Why didn’t my faith prepare me for this kind of pain? And what am I supposed to do now? Her search for answers led her to discover that generations past embraced rituals that served as vessels for pain and aided in the process of grieving and healing. Today, many of these traditions have been lost as religious practice declines, cultures amalgamate, death is sanitized, and pain is averted. In this raw and authentic memoir of bereavement, Opelt explores the history of human grief practices and how previous generations have journeyed through periods of suffering. She explores grief rituals and customs from various cultures, including: the Irish tradition of keening, or wailing in grief, which teaches her that healing can only begin when we dive headfirst into our grief the Victorian tradition of post-mortem photographs and how we struggle to recall a loved one as they were the Jewish tradition of sitting shiva, which reminds her to rest in the strength of her community even when God feels absent the tradition of mourning clothing, which set the bereaved apart in society for a time, allowing them space to honor their grief As Opelt explores each bereavement practice, it gives her a framework for processing her own pain. She shares how, in spite of her doubt and anger, God met her in the midst of sorrow and grieved along with her, and shows that when we carefully and honestly attend to our losses, we are able to expand our capacity for love, faith, and healing.

Author: Loyal Jones
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780945084433
Category : Appalachian Region, Southern
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Appalachian Values is a series of essays written to counter the persistent negative stereotypes about Appalachian people. The stories used to illustrate various values are accompanied by powerful photographes of appalachian people and settings.

Author: William Lynwood Montell
Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press
ISBN: 9780870495359
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
A fascinating collection of ghost stories, tales of the supernatural, death beliefs and death sayings that remain as a vestige of the part in south central Kentucky's "Pennyrile" region. "This unique and extremely valuable book adds considerably to the area of folklore studies in the United States. The material which Montell obtained in his field work is superb." --Don Yoder. "This book is to be recommended to both folklorists and those non-folklorists who read folklore for enjoyment alone. It makes an important contribution to the study of deathlore and, it is to be hoped, will draw added attention to this multi-generic subject area." --David J. Hufford, Tennessee Folklore Society Bulletin. "Professor Montell's book can well be viewed as a standard of excellence: a direct, articulate and cataloged approach for future study and implementation in the fields of folklore and oral history." --Joan Perkal, Oral History Association Newsletter. "The book gives fascinating accounts of death beliefs, death omens, folk beliefs associated with the dead, and in the major section, ghosts narratives. A fine combination of scholarship and chilling narration to be relished by firelight in an old deserted house in the hills." --Book Forum. "Professor Montell has arranged beliefs and experiences about death of a particular group of people in such a way that a whole new aspect of the people's lives comes to focus." --Loyal Jones, The Filson Club HIstory Quarterly.

Author: Robert Kastenbaum
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351866915
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 556

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Book Description
Providing an overview of the myriad ways that we are touched by death and dying, both as an individual and as a member of society, this book will help readers understand our relationship with death. Kastenbaum and Moreman show how various ways that individual and societal attitudes influence both how and when we die and how we live and deal with the knowledge of death and loss. This landmark text draws on contributions from the social and behavioral sciences as well as the humanities, such as history, religion, philosophy, literature, and the arts, to provide thorough coverage of understanding death and the dying process. Death, Society, and Human Experience was originally written by Robert Kastenbaum, a renowned scholar who developed one of the world’s first death education courses. Christopher Moreman, who has worked in the field of death studies for almost two decades specializing in afterlife beliefs and experiences, has updated this edition.

Author: Helen Dell
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1315302101
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
This book engages with the question of how music expresses and responds to the profound existential disturbance that death and loss present to the living. Singing Death ranges across genres from medieval love song to twenty-first-century horror film music. Each chapter offers readers an encounter with music as a distinct way of speaking or responding to human mortality. The chapters cover a wide range of disciplines: musicology, ethnomusicology, literature, history, philosophy, film studies, psychology and psychoanalysis. The collection is accompanied by a website including some of the music associated with each of its chapters.

Author: Abby Burnett
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1626743428
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 511

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Book Description
Before there was a death care industry where professional funeral directors offered embalming and other services, residents of the Arkansas Ozarks—and, for that matter, people throughout the South—buried their own dead. Every part of the complicated, labor-intensive process was handled within the deceased's community. This process included preparation of the body for burial, making a wooden coffin, digging the grave, and overseeing the burial ceremony, as well as observing a wide variety of customs and superstitions. These traditions, especially in rural communities, remained the norm up through the end of World War II, after which a variety of factors, primarily the loss of manpower and the rise of the funeral industry, brought about the end of most customs. Gone to the Grave, a meticulous autopsy of this now vanished way of life and death, documents mourning and practical rituals through interviews, diaries and reminiscences, obituaries, and a wide variety of other sources. Abby Burnett covers attempts to stave off death; passings that, for various reasons, could not be mourned according to tradition; factors contributing to high maternal and infant mortality; and the ways in which loss was expressed though obituaries and epitaphs. A concluding chapter examines early undertaking practices and the many angles funeral industry professionals worked to convince the public of the need for their services.

Author: Gary S. Foster
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3030232956
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Book Description
In one of the few studies to draw upon cemetery data to reconstruct the social organization, social change, and community composition of a specific area, this volume contributes to the growing body of sociohistorical examinations of Appalachia. The authors herein reconstruct the Cades Cove community in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, USA, a mountain community from circa 1818 to 1939, whose demise can be traced to the establishment of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. By supplementing a statistical analysis of Cades Cove’s twenty-seven cemeteries, completed as a National Park Study (#GRSM-01120), with ethnographic examination, the authors reconstruct the community in detail to reveal previously overlooked social patterns and interactions, including insight into the death culture and death-lore of the Upland South. This work establishes cemeteries as window into (proxies of) communities, demonstrating the relevance of socio-demographic data presented by statistical and other analyses of gravestones for Appalachian Studies, Regional Studies, Cemetery Studies, and Sociology and Anthropology.

Author: Nathan L. Vanderford
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 1950690059
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
Kentucky has more cancer diagnoses and cancer-related deaths than any other state in the nation, and most of these cases are concentrated in the fifty-four counties that constitute the Appalachian region of the commonwealth. These high rankings can be attributed to factors such as elevated smoking rates, unhealthy eating habits, lower levels of education, and limited access to health care. What is lost in the statistics is just how life-changing cancer can be—something that editors Nathan L. Vanderford, Lauren Hudson, and Chris Prichard have endeavored to address. The Cancer Crisis in Appalachia features essays written by a group of twenty high school and five undergraduate students, all of whom are residents of Kentucky's Appalachian region and are participants in the University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center's Appalachian Career Training in Oncology (ACTION) program, which is funded by the National Cancer Institute's Youth Enjoy Science Program. These authentic and candid student essays detail the effects of cancer diagnoses and deaths on individuals, families, friends, and communities, and proclaim these cases as more than nameless statistics. The authors shed light on personal cancer stories in hopes of inspiring readers to avoid cancer-risk behaviors, get involved with cancer-prevention initiatives, give generously, and uplift cancer patients and their loved ones.