Appalachia in the Classroom contributes to the twenty-first century dialogue about Appalachia by offering topics and teaching strategies that represent the diversity found within the region. Appalachia is a distinctive region with various cultural characteristics that can’t be essentialized or summed up by a single text. Appalachia in the Classroom offers chapters on teaching Appalachian poetry and fiction as well as discussions of nonfiction, films, and folklore. Educators will find teaching strategies that they can readily implement in their own classrooms; they’ll also be inspired to employ creative ways of teaching marginalized voices and to bring those voices to the fore. In the growing national movement toward place-based education, Appalachia in the Classroom offers a critical resource and model for engaging place in various disciplines and at several different levels in a thoughtful and inspiring way. Contributors: Emily Satterwhite, Elizabeth S. D. Engelhardt, John C. Inscoe, Erica Abrams Locklear, Jeff Mann, Linda Tate, Tina L. Hanlon, Patricia M. Gantt, Ricky L. Cox, Felicia Mitchell, R. Parks Lanier, Jr., Theresa L. Burriss, Grace Toney Edwards, and Robert M. West.

Tradition, community, and pride are fundamental aspects of the history of Appalachia, and the language of the region is a living testament to its rich heritage. Despite the persistence of unflattering stereotypes and cultural discrimination associated with their style of speech, Appalachians have organized to preserve regional dialects -- complex forms of English peppered with words, phrases, and pronunciations unique to the area and its people. Talking Appalachian examines these distinctive speech varieties and emphasizes their role in expressing local history and promoting a shared identity. Beginning with a historical and geographical overview of the region that analyzes the origins of its dialects, this volume features detailed research and local case studies investigating their use. The contributors explore a variety of subjects, including the success of African American Appalachian English and southern Appalachian English speakers in professional and corporate positions. In addition, editors Amy D. Clark and Nancy M. Hayward provide excerpts from essays, poetry, short fiction, and novels to illustrate usage. With contributions from well-known authors such as George Ella Lyon and Silas House, this balanced collection is the most comprehensive, accessible study of Appalachian language available today.

Alice Spencer Geddes Lloyd was a New England woman with a mission in life. In 1916 she settled on Caney Creek in Eastern Kentucky, determined to bring higher education to this remote corner of Appalachia. The school she founded, now Alice Lloyd College, continues to serve the area and its people and to stand as a tribute to Lloyd's remarkable energy, determination, and vision. Lloyd's program combined a rigorous academic curriculum with an intense effort to instill a sense of service in the school's graduates. This education was provided free and required only that the students abide by Lloyd's strict rules of conduct and pledge to remain in the mountains after graduating. In the first full-scale study of Lloyd's life and work and the institution she founded, David Searles shows how this courageous and complex woman struggled throughout her long life against seemingly insurmountable odds to create an institution dedicated to improving life in Appalachia. But, as he acknowledges, Lloyd's fundraising activities relied on harmful stereotypes that caused resentment among her mountain neighbors, and she often angered others working in the mountains. Despite the negative aspects of Lloyd's activities, Searles casts serious doubt on the now fashionable conclusion that the women who came to the mountains to do good created more problems than they solved. Lloyd's story, he argues, demonstrates that much good was indeed accomplished and that the people of the mountains recognized and appreciated her achievement.

This collection is the first comprehensive, cohesive volume to unite Appalachian history with its culture. Richard A. Straw and H. Tyler Blethen's High Mountains Rising provides a clear, systematic, and engaging overview of the Appalachian timeline, its people, and the most significant aspects of life in the region. The first half of the fourteen essays deal with historical issues including Native Americans, pioneer settlement, slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction, industrialization, the Great Depression, migration, and finally, modernization. The remaining essays take a more cultural focus, addressing stereotypes, music, folklife, language, literature, and religion. Bringing together many of the most prestigious scholars in Appalachian studies, this volume has been designed for general and classroom use, and includes suggestions for further reading.

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.

"Whistlin' and Crowin' Women of Appalachia" turns what everybody knows and takes for granted into explicit facts of the experiences and lives of these women. The discourse of the everyday person is transformed, changed by being written into self-aware iscourse, both empowered and empowering. Katherine Kelleher Sohn's descriptions of the difficulties of balancing work, job, classes, and marriage ring true and will resonate with women in many different environments."

"In exploring the ways that Appalachian people speak and write, Amanda E. Hayes raises the importance of knowing and respecting communication styles within a marginalized culture. Diving deep into the region's historical roots--especially those of the Scotch-Irish and their influence on her own Appalachian Ohio--Hayes reveals a rhetoric with its own unique logic, utility, and poetry. Hayes also considers the headwinds against Appalachian rhetoric, notably the resistance from ideologies about poverty and the biases of the school system. She connects these to challenges that Appalachian students face in the classroom and pinpoints pedagogical and structural approaches for change. Throughout, Hayes blends conventional scholarship with autobiography, storytelling, and language, illustrating Appalachian rhetoric's validity as a means of creating and sharing knowledge"--