Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Institution
Articles 1 - 6 of 6
Full-Text Articles in American Studies
Black Hillbilly: An Exploration Of The Black Erasure From The Appalachian Historical Narrative, Suzanne S A Blunk
Black Hillbilly: An Exploration Of The Black Erasure From The Appalachian Historical Narrative, Suzanne S A Blunk
Master of Arts in Humanities | Master's Theses 1936 - 2022
In 1915 two Black businessmen, Archie McKinney and Matthew Buster, secured the purchase and operation of Eagle Coal Company Inc. in Montgomery, West Virginia. A Black-owned coal company operated and existed in southwestern West Virginia. Eagle Coal has all but disappeared, even from historical memory. What exactly happened to this coal company remains very much a mystery and is a poignant image that represents the mystery that surrounds the Black experience in Appalachia. In the face of “social injustice, racial violence, disfranchisement, and the intensification of the segregationist system,” Black Americans set out from the South in search of better …
Kinstitution: A Topia Between Archive And Proposal, Christopher Lineberry
Kinstitution: A Topia Between Archive And Proposal, Christopher Lineberry
Theses and Dissertations
Situating Topher Lineberry's work, this paper offers a primer on institutional critique, preliminary developments of "kinstitutional critique," and the cultivation of family-derived art history through the work of the artist's grandmother, Helen Lineberry. Feeding into a working understanding of family-and-kin-as-institution, the paper ultimately locates Topher Lineberry's work between relations to place, historical archives, and speculative proposals.
Enduring Music: Migrant Appalachian Communities And The Shenandoah National Park, Madeline Marsh
Enduring Music: Migrant Appalachian Communities And The Shenandoah National Park, Madeline Marsh
Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019
This paper is an archival study of the displaced children of families formerly living in the Shenandoah National Park which spans from Strasburg to Waynesboro, Virginia. The study looks at interviews, from the JMU Special Collections archives, of these children in the 1970-80s, nearly fifty years after their forced migration from the 197,438 acres that comprised the park. Change and pressure during the 1930s-40s combined with national policy began the nostalgic preservation and veneration of the culture of these people of the Blue Ridge Mountains; through the archives, a clear and diverse picture of the perspectives and lifestyles of people …
“Ain’T It A Pretty Night?”: An Analysis Of Carlisle Floyd’S Susannah As An Allegory For The Socio-Political Culture Of The United States In The 1950s, Melissa L. Allen
“Ain’T It A Pretty Night?”: An Analysis Of Carlisle Floyd’S Susannah As An Allegory For The Socio-Political Culture Of The United States In The 1950s, Melissa L. Allen
Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019
This capstone thesis discusses the applicability of Carlisle Floyd’s 1955 opera, Susannah, as an allegory for the socio-political climate of the United States in the 1950s. In order to do so, a musical analysis of the opera’s score was then performed for its use of folk song conventions and verismo operatic conventions. The libretto was analyzed for the use of social conventions of Southern Appalachia. Characters actions and musical content were then judged on whether (1) their actions were in line with the social conventions of traditional Appalachian culture and (2) if their musical content used/reflected conventions of traditional Appalachian …
Get Ye A Copper Kettle: Appalachia, Moonshine, And A Postcolonial World, Christopher David Adkins
Get Ye A Copper Kettle: Appalachia, Moonshine, And A Postcolonial World, Christopher David Adkins
USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations
For little over a century, the American region of Appalachia was an internal mineral colony of the United States. This internal colonization produced innumerable negative environmental and economic effects, as well as – most insidious of all – the constructed stereotype of the Hillbilly that even in the Twenty-First Century refuses to die. Yet part and parcel of that same stereotype is something found all over Appalachia, representing a freedom, an identity, and an heritage so long denied to Appalachia and the Appalachian people on its own terms: moonshine, the colorless, unaged corn whiskey long produced both in Appalachia …
"This Murder Done": Misogyny, Femicide, And Modernity In 19th-Century Appalachian Murder Ballads, Christina Ruth Hastie
"This Murder Done": Misogyny, Femicide, And Modernity In 19th-Century Appalachian Murder Ballads, Christina Ruth Hastie
Masters Theses
This thesis contextualizes Appalachian murder ballads of the 19th- and early 20th-centuries through a close reading of the lyric texts. Using a research frame that draws from the musicological and feminist concepts of Diana Russell, Susan McClary, Norm Cohen, and Christopher Small, I reveal 19th-century Appalachia as a patriarchal, modern, and highly codified society despite its popularized image as a culturally isolated and “backward” place. I use the ballads to demonstrate how music serves the greater cultural purpose of preserving and perpetuating social ideologies. Specifically, the murder ballads reveal layers of meaning regarding hegemonic …