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Appalachian studies


Appalachian studies is the area studies field concerned with the Appalachian region of the United States.

Some of the first well-known Appalachian scholarship was done by Cratis D. Williams. His 1937 MA thesis in English from the University of Kentucky focused on 471 ballads and songs from eastern Kentucky and his 1961 PhD dissertation at New York University was called “The Southern Mountaineer in Fact and Fiction” with part of it appearing in The Appalachian Journal 1975-76 (Williams 1-2)

Berea College president W.D. Weatherford received a Ford Foundation grant in 1957 to underwrite an exhaustive regional study, The Southern Appalachian Region: A Survey, published in 1962, which many see as the beginning of the modern Appalachian studies movement (Blaustein 47-8).

In 1966, West Virginia University librarian Robert F. Munn noted that “more nonsense has been written about the Southern Mountains than any comparable area in the United States.” He also observed that there was “distressingly little in the way of useful primary and secondary materials” available for historical research on Appalachia” (Munn 1966).

Over the four decades since Munn’s comments, a wealth of excellent Appalachian scholarship has been published. Appalachian Studies is interdisciplinary, as befits the study of a complex and diverse region and people. Appalachian Studies includes such disciplines as history, literature, anthropology, music, religion, economics, education, environment, folklore and folk customs, labor issues, women's issues, ethnicity, health care, community organizing, economic development, coal mining, tourism, art, demography, migration, and urban & rural planning. Appalachian scholarship has addressed – and continues to address – various issues within all of these academic disciplines.


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