Appalachian Travels

Appalachian Travels
Author: Olive Dame Campbell
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2012-10-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 0813139929

In 1908 and 1909, noted social reformer and "songcatcher" Olive Dame Campbell traveled with her husband, John C. Campbell, through the Southern Highlands region of Appalachia to survey the social and economic conditions in mountain communities. Throughout the journey, Olive kept a detailed diary offering a vivid, entertaining, and personal account of the places the couple visited, the people they met, and the mountain cultures they encountered. Although John C. Campbell's book, The Southern Highlander and His Homeland, is cited by nearly every scholar writing about the region, little has been published about the Campbells themselves and their role in the sociological, educational, and cultural history of Appalachia. In this critical edition, Elizabeth McCutchen Williams makes Olive's diary widely accessible to scholars and students for the first time. Appalachian Travels only offers an invaluable account of mountain society at the turn of the twentieth century.

The Life and Work of John C. Campbell

The Life and Work of John C. Campbell
Author: Olive Dame Campbell
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Total Pages: 723
Release: 2017-02-17
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0813168554

John C. Campbell (1867–1919) is widely considered to be a pioneer in the objective study of the complex world of Appalachian mountaineers. Thanks to a grant from the Russell Sage Foundation, Campbell traveled throughout the region with his wife—noted social reformer and "songcatcher" Olive Dame Campbell—interviewing and profiling its people. His landmark work, The Southern Highlander and His Homeland, is cited by nearly every scholar writing about the region, yet little has been published about the Campbells and their role in the sociological, educational, and cultural history of Appalachia. Elizabeth McCutchen Williams has prepared the first critical edition of Olive Dame Campbell's comprehensive overview of her husband's life and work—a project left unfinished at the time of Olive's death. Never before published, this unique volume draws extensively on diary entries and personal letters to illuminate the significance and lasting impact of John C. Campbell's contributions. The result is a dynamic blend of biography and collected correspondence that presents an insightful portrait of the influential educator and reformer.

The Life and Work of John C. Campbell

The Life and Work of John C. Campbell
Author: Olive Dame Campbell
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Total Pages: 1071
Release: 2017-02-17
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0813168562

John C. Campbell (1867–1919) is widely considered to be a pioneer in the objective study of the complex world of Appalachian mountaineers. Thanks to a grant from the Russell Sage Foundation, Campbell traveled throughout the region with his wife—noted social reformer and "songcatcher" Olive Dame Campbell—interviewing and profiling its people. His landmark work, The Southern Highlander and His Homeland, is cited by nearly every scholar writing about the region, yet little has been published about the Campbells and their role in the sociological, educational, and cultural history of Appalachia. Elizabeth McCutchen Williams has prepared the first critical edition of Olive Dame Campbell's comprehensive overview of her husband's life and work—a project left unfinished at the time of Olive's death. Never before published, this unique volume draws extensively on diary entries and personal letters to illuminate the significance and lasting impact of John C. Campbell's contributions. The result is a dynamic blend of biography and collected correspondence that presents an insightful portrait of the influential educator and reformer.

Writing Appalachia

Writing Appalachia
Author: Katherine Ledford
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Total Pages: 776
Release: 2020-02-24
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 0813178819

Despite the stereotypes and misconceptions surrounding Appalachia, the region has nurtured and inspired some of the nation's finest writers. Featuring dozens of authors born into or adopted by the region over the past two centuries, Writing Appalachia showcases for the first time the nuances and contradictions that place Appalachia at the heart of American history. This comprehensive anthology covers an exceedingly diverse range of subjects, genres, and time periods, beginning with early Native American oral traditions and concluding with twenty-first-century writers such as Wendell Berry, bell hooks, Silas House, Barbara Kingsolver, and Frank X Walker. Slave narratives, local color writing, folklore, work songs, modernist prose -- each piece explores unique Appalachian struggles, questions, and values. The collection also celebrates the significant contributions of women, people of color, and members of the LGBTQ community to the region's history and culture. Alongside Southern and Central Appalachian voices, the anthology features northern authors and selections that reflect the urban characteristics of the region. As one text gives way to the next, a more complete picture of Appalachia emerges -- a landscape of contrasting visions and possibilities.

Appalachia on the Table

Appalachia on the Table
Author: Erica Abrams Locklear
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2023-04-15
Genre: Cooking
ISBN: 0820363375

When her mother passed along a cookbook made and assembled by her grandmother, Erica Abrams Locklear thought she knew what to expect. But rather than finding a homemade cookbook full of apple stack cake, leather britches, pickled watermelon, or other “traditional” mountain recipes, Locklear discovered recipes for devil’s food cake with coconut icing, grape catsup, and fig pickles. Some recipes even relied on food products like Bisquick, Swans Down flour, and Calumet baking powder. Where, Locklear wondered, did her Appalachian food script come from? And what implicit judgments had she made about her grandmother based on the foods she imagined she would have been interested in cooking? Appalachia on the Table argues, in part, that since the conception of Appalachia as a distinctly different region from the rest of the South and the United States, the foods associated with the region and its people have often been used to socially categorize and stigmatize mountain people. Rather than investigate the actual foods consumed in Appalachia, Locklear instead focuses on the representations of foods consumed, implied moral judgments about those foods, and how those judgments shape reader perceptions of those depicted. The question at the core of Locklear’s analysis asks, How did the dominant culinary narrative of the region come into existence and what consequences has that narrative had for people in the mountains?

Movie-Made Appalachia

Movie-Made Appalachia
Author: John C. Inscoe
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2020-11-24
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1469660156

While Hollywood deserves its reputation for much-maligned portrayals of southern highlanders on screen, the film industry also deserves credit for a long-standing tradition of more serious and meaningful depictions of Appalachia's people. Surveying some two dozen films and the literary and historical sources from which they were adapted, John C. Inscoe argues that in the American imagination Appalachia has long represented far more than deprived and depraved hillbillies. Rather, the films he highlights serve as effective conduits into the region's past, some grounded firmly in documented realities and life stories, others only loosely so. In either case, they deserve more credit than they have received for creating sympathetic and often complex characters who interact within families, households, and communities amidst a wide array of historical contingencies. They provide credible and informative narratives that respect the specifics of the times and places in which they are set. Having used many of these movies as teaching tools in college classrooms, Inscoe demonstrates the cumulative effect of analyzing them in terms of shared themes and topics to convey far more generous insights into Appalachia and its history than one would have expected to emerge from southern California's "dream factory."

Diary as Literature: Through the Lens of Multiculturalism in America

Diary as Literature: Through the Lens of Multiculturalism in America
Author: Angela R. Hooks
Publisher: Vernon Press
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2020-02-20
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1622738942

Meandering plots, dead ends, and repetition, diaries do not conform to literary expectations, yet they still manage to engage the reader, arouse empathy and elicit emotional responses that many may be more inclined to associate with works of fiction. Blurring the lines between literary genres, diary writing can be considered a quasi-literary genre that offers a unique insight into the lives of those we may have otherwise never discovered. This edited volume examines how diarists, poets, writers, musicians, and celebrities use their diary to reflect on multiculturalism and intercultural relations. Within this book, multiculturalism is defined as the sociocultural experiences of underrepresented groups who fall outside the mainstream of race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability, and language. Multiculturalism reflects different cultures and racial groups with equal rights and opportunities, equal attention and representation without assimilation. In America, the multicultural society includes various cultural and ethnic groups that do not necessarily have engaging interaction with each other whereas, importantly, intercultural is a community of cultures who learn from each other, and have respect and understand different cultures. Presented as a collection of academic essays and creative writing, The Diary as Literature Through the Lens of Multiculturalism in America analyses diary writing in its many forms from oral diaries and memoirs to letters and travel writing. Divided into three sections: Diaries of the American Civil War, Diaries of Trips and Letters of Diaspora, and Diaries of Family, Prison Lyrics, and a Memoir, the contributors bring a range of expertise to this quasi-literary genre including comparative and transatlantic literature, composition and rhetoric, history and women and gender studies.

Katherine Jackson French

Katherine Jackson French
Author: Elizabeth DiSavino
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2020-05-19
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0813178541

The second woman to earn a PhD from Columbia University—and the first from south of the Mason-Dixon Line to do so—Kentucky native Katherine Jackson French broke boundaries. Her research kick-started a resurgence of Appalachian music that continues to this day, but French's collection of traditional Kentucky ballads, which should have been her crowning scholarly achievement, never saw print. Academic rivalries, gender prejudice, and broken promises set against a thirty-year feud known as the Ballad Wars denied French her place in history and left the field to northerner Olive Dame Campbell and English folklorist Cecil Sharp, setting Appalachian studies on a foundation marred by stereotypes and misconceptions. Katherine Jackson French: Kentucky's Forgotten Ballad Collector tells the story of what might have been. Drawing on never-before-seen artifacts from French's granddaughter, Elizabeth DiSavino reclaims the life and legacy of this pivotal scholar by emphasizing the ways her work shaped and could reshape our conceptions about Appalachia. In contrast to the collection published by Campbell and Sharp, French's ballads elevate the status of women, give testimony to the complexity of balladry's ethnic roots and influences, and reveal more complex local dialects. Had French published her work in 1910, stereotypes about Appalachian ignorance, misogyny, and homogeneity may have diminished long ago. Included in this book is the first-ever publication of Katherine Jackson French's English-Scottish Ballads from the Hills of Kentucky.

Knoxville Music before Bluegrass

Knoxville Music before Bluegrass
Author: Tim Sharp
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 128
Release: 2020-01-13
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1439668752

Since colonial times, generations of families from Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and England have settled in Knoxville and East Tennessee. Early on, they arrived with ballads, stories, instruments, and folk music from their former homes. "Songcatchers," including Francis James Child, Olive Dame Campbell, Maud Pauline Karpeles, Cecil J. Sharp, William Francis Allen, Lucy McKim Garrison, Charles Pickard Ware, and George Pullen Jackson, journeyed deep into the remotest areas of East Tennessee to capture their songs in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This music existed almost unchanged until the introduction of commercial recording and radio broadcasting in the 1920s. The historic recording sessions in Bristol, Tennessee, in the summer of 1927 sparked new genres of music, and through the contribution of musicians like Lester Flatt, Josh Graves, Dolly Parton, Earl Scruggs, Ralph Stanley, the Carter Family, Bill Monroe, and many others, Knoxville and East Tennessee are acknowledged for the roles they played in the birth of country and bluegrass music.