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Appalachian Studies Commons

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West Virginia University

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Articles 1 - 16 of 16

Full-Text Articles in Appalachian Studies

Anamnesis, Kristian Thacker Jan 2024

Anamnesis, Kristian Thacker

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

My work examines the duality of living in Appalachia and cherishing its picturesque environment; while being complicit in its ongoing destruction via industry and resource extraction. Composed of my own photographs and selections from the Farm Security Administration archives, this body of work presents a vision of the region that’s purpose extends beyond value judgments. Rather, it considers the manmade and natural environments of Appalachia holistically, each one integral to the experience and understanding of the other. Following the same aesthetic choices I make in my professional practice as a photojournalist, I blur the boundary between art and documentation. In …


Navigating Place And Gender: A Multicontextual Critical Narrative Inquiry Of Rural Trans* Student Experiences, Jessie Lynn O'Quinn Jan 2023

Navigating Place And Gender: A Multicontextual Critical Narrative Inquiry Of Rural Trans* Student Experiences, Jessie Lynn O'Quinn

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

The purpose of this critical narrative study was to understand how rural West Virginia trans* students navigate cultural norms of their rural home communities and higher education contexts. An essential part of this critical narrative was to provide rural trans* students with an avenue to share their unique experiences and give them a platform to share their voices. The resulting narratives suggested that the normative tensions rural trans* college students experience across contexts stemmed from negative regional experiences that reinforced traditional gender norms. Negative home contexts and experiences forced students to feel like they had to build walls and distance …


Levantine Immigration And Community Building In Charleston, West Virginia, 1900-1930, George P. Jacobs Ii Jan 2023

Levantine Immigration And Community Building In Charleston, West Virginia, 1900-1930, George P. Jacobs Ii

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Immigrants from the Levant, a region of the middle east made up of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Palestine, settled in the United States in large numbers between 1890 and 1920. Many eventually decided to make Charleston, West Virginia their permanent home. When they arrived in Charleston, most Levantine immigrants worked as peddlers, selling modern wares and household goods to families that needed them. This research explains the context for this immigration wave, the important economic niche Levantine immigrants satisfied in the developing economy of southern West Virginia, and how over time Charleston’s Levantine community contributed significantly to the city’s culture.


“I’Ll Tell You No Lies”: An Exploration Of Trauma, Memory, And Violence Against Women In North Carolina Murder Ballads, Madison Ava Helman Jan 2023

“I’Ll Tell You No Lies”: An Exploration Of Trauma, Memory, And Violence Against Women In North Carolina Murder Ballads, Madison Ava Helman

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

This dissertation explores trauma, memory and violence against women in Western North Carolina murder ballads “Tom Dooley,” “Poor Omie Wise,” “Poor Ellen Smith,” “The Ballad of the Lawson Family,” and “Frankie Silver.” I posit that these ballads were influenced by prescriptive societal conceptions of femininity, which in turn influenced societal ideations of violence against women. Using folklore performance theory, I analyze the text and context of these ballads and their subsequent histories, eventually arriving at a template for polyvocality that incorporates multiple ballad variants and encourages diverse performances.


Source Credibility And Trust Of Media Information Based On Gender Of Reporter, Madison R. Urse Jan 2023

Source Credibility And Trust Of Media Information Based On Gender Of Reporter, Madison R. Urse

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

An experiment was used for this study to explore if the gender of a reporter impacts perceived source credibility and thus trust in information. Previous research has shown how gender biases can affect how topics are covered, reported on, perceived and marketed in the journalistic world. Modern media and newsrooms are meant to mirror reality as they convey information to the public, yet women continue to be gatekept out of reporting on certain types of news. Further, changes in the mode of delivery of news are also impacting the journalism landscape. Thus, this study employed a digital stimulus to explore …


Narrative Transportation In Documentary Film: How Immersion Into The Documentary Film Hillbilly Affects Viewers' Attitudes, Alayna G. Fuller Jan 2022

Narrative Transportation In Documentary Film: How Immersion Into The Documentary Film Hillbilly Affects Viewers' Attitudes, Alayna G. Fuller

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

For decades, film has relied on stereotypical misconceptions to depict Appalachian people on screen. Research has demonstrated that visual narratives and the experience of narrative transportation has the power to change individuals’ perceptions about information conveyed implicitly or explicitly within a story. Presently, no empirical research has examined how viewer attitudes form based on their level of immersion into an Appalachian documentary film. To fill this gap, this study offers a quantitative approach to examine if the documentary Hillbilly narratively transports the viewer into the world of Appalachia and shifts audience perceptions of the stereotypical Appalachian persona or “hillbilly.” The …


The Vanishing Frontier: Economic And Social Change In Western North Carolina, 1945-1970, Elisabeth Avery Moore Jan 2022

The Vanishing Frontier: Economic And Social Change In Western North Carolina, 1945-1970, Elisabeth Avery Moore

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

This dissertation works to integrate the growth of regional tourism into the existing historiography of economic development in Appalachia and the postwar American South. Regional leaders introduced an economic transition throughout western North Carolina that emphasized the growth of regional tourism. By centering this study on the growth of regional tourism, this research also analyzes regional boosters’ efforts to manufacture and commodify a racialized and classed folk culture within the region for tourist consumption. In the late nineteenth century, journalists and folklorists had emphasized the deviance of mountain life and simultaneously romanticized the area as a land of rugged, white …


Doctors, Miners, And Black Lung: A Transatlantic Comparison Of Organized Medicine's Role In The Fight For Black Lung Recognition In West Virginia And Wales, Mollie M. Cecil Md Jan 2021

Doctors, Miners, And Black Lung: A Transatlantic Comparison Of Organized Medicine's Role In The Fight For Black Lung Recognition In West Virginia And Wales, Mollie M. Cecil Md

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Black lung disease is a crippling occupational lung disease experienced by coal miners throughout the world. However, this disease was not always recognized by the medical profession and required significant efforts on the part of miners’ unions to force mainstream recognition. The historiography on the subject is limited, especially with respect to the relationship between organized medicine and organized labor. This work further explores this relationship, particularly how this relationship differed between the parties in Wales and in West Virginia. In doing so, it portrays a more detailed picture of the fight for black lung recognition as well as highlights …


The Appalachian Medical Student Experience: A Case Study, Jason Scott Hedrick Jan 2021

The Appalachian Medical Student Experience: A Case Study, Jason Scott Hedrick

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

The Appalachian region is a rural swath of mountainous terrain home to a historically distinct culture. The region’s population suffers from a multitude of health issues and disparities. Notably, the region also experiences a major healthcare provider shortage despite the fact that states, like West Virginia, produce per capita, a high volume of physicians. Appalachia, and particularly West Virginia, also suffers from a number of educational disparities, which culminates into low numbers of college graduates within the population. There is a plethora of research that has explored the first-generation college student, students from rural and Appalachian backgrounds, first-generation and rural …


Resilience In The Mountains: Exploring The Labor And Motives Of Food-Caregiver Women Repairing Broken Food Systems In West Virginia Communities, Heidi Lynn Gum Jan 2020

Resilience In The Mountains: Exploring The Labor And Motives Of Food-Caregiver Women Repairing Broken Food Systems In West Virginia Communities, Heidi Lynn Gum

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Over the past four years the Food Justice Lab, now housed within the Center for Resilient Communities at West Virginia University, hosted a series of food access planning workshops across the state of West Virginia. Mobilizing more than 200 participants, the Nourishing Networks workshop training program was designed to build grassroots capacity for food system change. Eighty-percent of workshop participants were women and dialogues recorded at these events revealed how women are disproportionately impacted by food insecurity and disproportionately labor to repair a broken food system. Women in West Virginia are not only growing food, feeding their families, selling it …


Making A Dent, Emily Morwood Jan 2020

Making A Dent, Emily Morwood

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

West Virginia’s opioid-related death rates have surpassed any other state since 2014, with projections that it will continue to do so. With the epidemic, largely negative and stereotypical accusations have come, which have led to “othering,” or the concept of making groups ‘other’ due to their differences. This documentary project’s purpose is to address those that have been put in those othered groups through the concept of Standpoint Theory, which argues that insiders to a situation should tell their stories, rather than outsiders. The project aimed to allow the participants to tell their perspectives on the epidemic as insiders in …


West Virginia Waterscapes: Surface And Mineral Owners’ Perspectives On Groundwater Contamination Due To Natural Gas Extraction, Bethani Turley Jan 2019

West Virginia Waterscapes: Surface And Mineral Owners’ Perspectives On Groundwater Contamination Due To Natural Gas Extraction, Bethani Turley

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

In the past decade, northwest West Virginia has experienced increasing natural gas extraction from the Marcellus shale. Because water usage for natural gas extraction is high and increasing, there has been a proliferation of concerns about gas extraction’s impacts on surface and groundwaters, especially how hydraulic fracturing and drilling impacts residents’ access to safe household well water. This issue is particularly salient in rural West Virginia, where many residents rely on groundwater wells for household uses. This thesis, based on 30 in-depth interviews with surface and mineral owners, explores resident perspectives and lived experience of natural gas extraction’s impacts on …


Swiss Settlement In Randolph County, West Virginia: A Study Of Land Deals, Policies, And Immigration, Elizabeth Satterfield Jan 2018

Swiss Settlement In Randolph County, West Virginia: A Study Of Land Deals, Policies, And Immigration, Elizabeth Satterfield

Munn Scholars Awards

No abstract provided.


"For Men And Measures" : The Life And Legacy Of Civil Rights Pioneer J.R. Clifford, Connie Park Rice Jan 2007

"For Men And Measures" : The Life And Legacy Of Civil Rights Pioneer J.R. Clifford, Connie Park Rice

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

In an era historian Rayford W. Logan described as “the nadir of black history,” African Americans confronted growing discrimination, disfranchisement, segregation, and frequent acts of violence, including lynching in the decades before and after 1900. It was an era in which a nation, and its people, violated the basic principles of American democracy. Yet despite the difficulties facing black Americans in those decades, J.R. Clifford, West Virginia’s first black editor and practicing attorney, made significant strides in raising the condition and status of not only black West Virginians, but African Americans across the nation, as a result of his quest …


The Woman Suffrage Movement In West Virginia, 1867-1920, Anne Wallace Effland Jan 1983

The Woman Suffrage Movement In West Virginia, 1867-1920, Anne Wallace Effland

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

No abstract provided.


The Early History Of Grafton, Joseph Franklin Snider Jan 1945

The Early History Of Grafton, Joseph Franklin Snider

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

No abstract provided.