AMST 63
Junior seminar
Fall 1997
Hillbilly Highway: Appalachia and America
Dr. Whisnant
Purposes of the Course:
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To introduce you to the history, politics, and culture
of the Appalachian region
-
To interrogate the pervasive cultural and other stereotypes
associated with the region
-
To explore the relationships between Appalachia and dominant
discourses and institutions
Course materials list:
Durwood Dunn, Cade's Cove: The Life and Death of a
Southern Appalachian Community, 1818-1937
Ronald D. Eller, Miners, Millhands and Mountaineers
Steven Fisher, Fighting Back in Appalachia
Lon Savage, Thunder in the Mountains: The West Virginia
Mine War 1920-21
David E. Whisnant, Modernizing the Mountaineer: People,
Power, and Planning in Appalachia
David E. Whisnant, All That Is Native and Fine: The
Politics of Culture in an American Region
Selected materials on reserve
Selected films [all titles mentioned are in Non-Print
section of UNC undergraduate library]
Some General Online Resources:
Course Requirements:
You will be responsible for completing
the following components of work in the course. Percentages of your
final grade for each component are indicated in parentheses.
1. You will make yourself an expert on one Appalachian
county or city during the semester (see Instructions)
[33%]. You will present the results of what you are learning in a
series of mini-reports at indicated points during the semester.
Examples of final versions of some student projects Fall
1997:
2. You will take a mid-term examination that will
cover all required readings and class discussions [20%].
3. You will complete one small research project,
using primarily World Wide Web materials [7%].
4. You will prepare carefully for class discussions,
and participate actively in them [15%].
5. The final examination will count 25%/
Class Sessions
The following
class sessions are grouped around five broad topics:
Defining the Region (5 classes)
Population (6 classes)
Economy (9 classes)
Cultural Politics (3 classes)
Music (5 classes)
1. Introduction
2. Defining the Region I: How do you know when you
are there?:
3. Defining the Region II: Questions That Are Useful,
and Some That Are Not
4. Population I: The First Appalachian People: the
Cherokees and others
5. Population II: White Mountaineers: Who came, from where,
and when?
Dunn, Cade's Cove:
Chap. 1: Settlement and Early History,
pp. 1-22
Chap. 2: The Impact of the Wilderness,
pp. 23-62
Draft #1 of
City/County report due [See
Instructions]
6. Economy I: The Preindustrial Economy
and the Buying/Selling of the Mountains
Eller, Miners, Millhands and Mountaineers:
Chap. 2 : A Magnificent Field for
Capitalists, pp. 39-85
Dunn, Cade's Cove:
Chap. 3: The Market Economy,
pp. 63-98
Maps that are useful:
7. Music I: Ballads
8. Economy II: Turnpikes, Hot Springs, and Railroad Hotels:
Early
Tourism
9. Defining the Region III: Mountaineers in Genteel
Magazines: Local Color
Mary N. Murfree, "The Dancin' Party at Harrison's Cove"
[reserve]
Dunn, Cade's Cove:
Chap. 7: Family Life and Social Customs,
pp. 179-200
10. Economy III: Tumult on the Mountains: Lumbering
Eller, Miners, Millhands and Mountaineers:
Chap. 3: The Last Great Trees, pp.
86-127
11. Music II: Fiddle tunes
Some web pages to check out:
Films at UNC:
The Old Time Music Maker, Melvin Wine (V4134;
27 min.): a West Virginia fiddler
Sprout Wings and Fly (V1804; 28 min.; 1983): traditional
fiddler from Round Peak area of NC, with revival players
Texas Style (V4149; 28 min.; 1987): to help you
compare Texas style and repertoire with southeastern style
Draft #2 of City/County report due
[See
Instructions]
12. Economy IV: Birth and Growth of the Coal Industry
Pictorial
essay on coal mining in the 19th-century United States (Anthracite
fields of PA; Ohio State University Department of History)
Directors
and friends inspect property of Elkhorn Mining Corp., Fleming, KY, May
15, 1914.
Eller, Miners, Millhands and Mountaineers:
Chap. 4: The Ascendancy of
Coal, pp. 128-60
Chap. 5: Life in the Company Towns,
pp. 161-98
Chap. 6: Profits and Power:
The Coal Barons, pp. 199-224
Coal
Fields of the Conterminous United States [clickable map]
Time
line on development of the coal industry
Pictorial
Essay on Coal Mining in the Nineteenth Century (prepared
by History Department, Ohio State University)
Coal
Mining in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (prepared by the History
Department, Ohio State University)
Library of Congress American
Memory Collection [search on "coal miners" (photos and prints only)]
Map
of Kentucky coal-producing areas
Kentucky Geological
Survey
Paper assignment: From data available on the MSHA
sites below, write a 3-5 pp. paper on what you conclude to be some
of the most important facts about, trends, and changes in coal mining health
and safety since 1931. Paper is
due at class #15
13. Defining the Region IV: Yellow Journalism and the
Feuds
14. Population III: Churches
Dunn, Cade's Cove:
Chap. 4: Religion and the Churches,
pp. 99-122
Whisnant, Modernizing the Mountaineer:
Chap. 1: The Council of the Southern
Mountains, pp. 3-39
Recommended film: Appalachian Film Workshop, In
the Good Old Fashioned Way (1973)
Links
to some denominations that figure prominently in the region (sites I could
find; absence of a denomination from this list does NOT mean it does not
operate or is not important):
15. Cultural Politics I: All That Is Native and Fine:
Settlement Schools and Festivals
Whisnant, All That Is Native and Fine:
Introduction, pp. 5-16
Chap. 1: Culture and Social Change
at Hindman Settlement School, pp. 17-101
Paper due on historical coal mining statistics (class
12 material above)
16. Economy V: Bloody Harlan and Blair Mountain: The UMWA
and the Mine Wars
17.
Mid-term examination (Tuesday, October 14)
FALL BREAK
18. Music III: String
Bands
19. Population IV: Non-whites
20. Cultural Politics II: L'il Abner and Other Hillbillies:
Print and material culture stereotypes
21. Economy VI: Strip Away, Big D-9 Dozer: Technological
Change and Decline in the Coal Industry
Fisher, Fighting Back in Appalachia:
Bingman, "Stopping the Bulldozers,"
pp. 17-30
Allen, "Save Our Cumberland Mountains,"
pp. 85-100
Recommended films:
Appalachian Film Workshop, On
Our Own Land [stripmining]
Appalachian Film Workshop, Coal
Mining Women [women coal mining workers]
Appalachian Film Workshop, Mine
War on Blackberry Creek [1980s strike against A. T. Massey Co.]
Appalachian Film Workshop, Justice
in the Coalfields [current labor law cripples collective bargaining]
Buffalo
Creek WV flood (1972) caused by negligent stripmining practices (West
Virginia Library Commission site)
Draft #3 of City/County report due [See
Instructions]
22. Population V: Hillbilly Highway: Outmigration
23. Music IV: Commercial Country Music and Appalachia
24: Economy VII: Federal Development Programs (1)
25. Economy VIII: Federal Development Programs (2)
Whisnant, Modernizing the Mountaineer:
Chap. 4: Appalachia and the
War on Poverty, pp. 92-125
Chaps. 5-6: The Appalachian Regional
Commission, pp. 126-82
Recommended film: Appalachia: Rich Land, Poor People
(1968; 59 min.; V1383)
26. Economy IX:
Later Tourism
Go to the National Park Service "Enhanced
Cade's Cove Pages":
Click on "Cultural
History." Read this page carefully and compare the NPS interpretation
of Cade's Cove and its history with what you have learned from Durwood
Dunn's book and from this course. Write a 4-6 pp. paper presenting
your observations and analysis.
27. Defining the Region V:
Revisionist Paradigms
Fisher, Fighting Back in Appalachia:
Glen, "Like a Flower Slowly
Blooming: Highlander and the Nurturing of an Appalachian Movement," pp.
31-56
Banks, Billings, and Tice, "Appalachian
Studies, Resistance, and Postmodernism," pp. 283-301
Fisher, "Conclusion: New Populist
Theory and the Study of Dissent in Appalachia," pp. 317-38
28. Population VI: "From Fussin' to Organizing": Individual
vs.Organized Opposition
Fisher, Fighting Back in Appalachia:
Cable, "From Fussin' to Organizing:
Individual and Collective Resistance on Yellow Creek," pp. 69-84
Sessions and Ansley, "Singing Across
Dark Spaces: The . . . Takeover of Pittston's
Moss 3," pp. 195-224
Anglin, "Engendering the Struggle: Women's
Labor and Traditions of Resistance," pp. 263-282
Recommended film: Appalachian Film Workshop, Chemical
Valley (1991)
This film
draws a comparison between the disaster at Union Carbide's Bhopal, India
plant and their plant at
Institute,
WV, which manufactures the same chemical. Extensive interviews with
Institute residents.
29. Music V: Music of Opposition and Revitalization
Fisher, Fighting Back in Appalachia:
Carawan, "Sowing on the Mountain: Nurturing Cultural
Roots . . . ," pp. 245-62
Foster, "Politics, Expressive Form, and Historical
Knowledge," pp. 303-16
30. Cultural Politics III: Appalachia
in Hollywood Films
Note
on final examination
Copyright 1997 by David E. Whisnant
(located by Joy Salyers)