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National
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Institute Overview
Thanks for inquiring about “Regional Study and the Liberal Arts: Appalachia Up-Close,” a four-week summer institute (June 8 – July 4, 2008) for college and university teachers, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and hosted by Ferrum College. This is Ferrum’s fourth such undertaking.
In the past thirty years, regional studies have established a valuable niche in higher education, but the fruits of that effort have yet to be extensively explored for the mainline curriculum. In a project that is an integral part of the institute, participants may consider possibilities of using regional material in general education classes and in more specialized classes, as well as exploring the potential for regional study to make experiential or service learning more meaningful. They may also explore connections between what they learn about Appalachia and what they know about other regions or about national/global issues, connections that might lead to scholarly articles or to faculty or student exchanges between regions (possibilities enhanced by personal connections made at the institute). Some participants use background information from the institute to enhance research projects about a variety of regional topics. While the project does not have to be completed during the institute, participants should see its development as a key benefit of the entire experience and should include a description of it in their application essay. As with all NEH seminars and institutes, preferential consideration will be given to those who have not attended a prior NEH seminar or institute. Your completed application should be postmarked no later than March 3, 2008, and should be addressed as follows:
Perhaps the most important part of the application is the essay that must be submitted as part of the completed application. This essay should include any personal and academic information that is relevant: reasons for applying to this institute with this particular topic; qualifications to do the work of the institute and make a contribution to it; what you hope to accomplish by participation, including specifically the institute project described above; and the relation of the study to your teaching. PLEASE READ application guidelines carefully and NOTE that the application cover sheet needs to be filled out electronically for NEH and then included as a hard copy in your application to Ferrum. Stipends for those selected to be institute scholars will be $3,000, half paid the first day of the institute, the other half midway through. If you have questions, please feel free to e-mail me at pcrow@ferrum.edu or call (540) 365-4320. Here is a brief summary of topics, speakers, and primary texts. Consult the Tentative Schedule for more detail. Arrival and Orientation (Sunday afternoon, June 8) Week One (June 9-15) Early regionalists tended to view Appalachia as a pristine area being sullied in the opinion of some by its backward inhabitants and in the opinion of others by runaway industrialization. More recent regionalists have found in the region fertile ground for re-evaluation of prior assumptions. Charles Reagan Wilson (The New Regionalism) suggests that this pattern is characteristic of most American regions, associating the first kind of regionalism with modernist concerns and the second with post-modernist issues. John Sayles’ movie Matewan is an example of a critique of industrial impact on Mingo County, West Virginia. Rebecca Bailey’s study of Matewan’s history as it relates to Sayles’ movie is an example of critical re-evaluation of assumptions and preconceptions, namely Sayles’. Primary texts for the first week are Gordon B. McKinney’s The Heart of Confederate Appalachia, Sayles’ Matewan, and Rebecca Bailey’s Matewan Before the Massacre. Week Two (June 16-22) During the second week, the institute will examine more regional issues—music, immigration, out-migration, gender, race—especially their varied manifestations and adaptations. Consistent with the institute’s philosophy of looking at issues from different perspectives, one of the faculty this week is a novelist and another a poet.
Primary texts for the second week are Adriana Trigiani’s Big Stone Gap, Phillip Obermiller’s African-American Miners and Migrants (written with Thomas Wagner), Phillip Overmiller’s Appalachia in an International Context (edited with William Philliber), Mary K. Anglin’s Women, Power, and Dissent in the Hills of Carolina, and Frank X. Walker’s Affrilachia. Week Three (June 23-27) This week wraps up discussion of Appalachian issues as they relate to traditions, change, and relationship to other regional issues, national and international. The focus then turns to preparation for community-based research and activities in Caretta and finally to progress reports by institute scholars on their major projects.
Primary texts for the third week are George Loveland’s Under the Workers’ Caps and Peter Crow’s Do, Die or Get Along. Weekend at Breaks Interstate Park (June 27-29) Two-to-a-room accommodations and two buffet-style meals are covered in institute fees during this weekend at beautiful Breaks Interstate Park. Five Days at Caretta (June 29 afternoon-July 4 noon) While at Caretta, institute scholars will witness up close the family life, gender roles, educational opportunities, financial challenges, health considerations, religion, art, music, story telling, ecology, and environmental stresses of a rural, mountain community in the coalfields of West Virginia. They will play these observations off what they have learned about these issues at Ferrum. Over the five days in Caretta, the institute will move quickly beyond a posture of observation to one of immersion as well. In working and researching together, institute scholars and community members both will likely transcend stereotypes of the other and form memorable, perhaps lasting relationships. Accommodations are dormitory style (see description under Accommodations and Travel); all meals are family style and covered in institute fees.
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The institute seeks participants (institute scholars) from regions throughout the country interested in how regional perspectives comment on wider national and global issues, and consequently how regional material can enhance the undergraduate curriculum. Our approach encourages interdisciplinary and experiential learning and teaching. NEH summer institutes provide the framework for teacher/scholars to pursue significant professional development in a productive, enjoyable setting—structured and purposeful but also informal, convivial, and offering plenteous opportunities for individuals to explore varied interests. The director and core faculty at Ferrum work hard to ensure that the potential of this experience is realized for each participant.
During the first three weeks of the institute, there will be group sessions on the Ferrum College campus Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays from 9 am until about 3:30 pm with an hour and a half for lunch. Some of these sessions will involve discussion of texts, others with presentation and response, some with panels involving institute scholars, and still others with walking and observing. Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays are free for reading, writing, and travel. On some of those days, the institute will organize optional activities such as hiking on the Appalachian Trail, listening to bluegrass music at the Floyd Country Store, or picnicking on the Blue Ridge Parkway. During one of our institutes, scholars formed their own pickin’ and singin’ ensemble. Throughout this time, institute scholars will also be working on a scholarly or pedagogical project described in their applications. It is expected that participants will make significant progress on these projects, but there is no pressure for a finished product. 
In addition to the three weeks at Ferrum, this year’s institute will feature a five-day field/experiential component in Caretta, West Virginia, home of Big Creek People in Action, an organization of local people recording their coal mining heritage; addressing problems with flooding, illiteracy and unemployment; and seeking a future based on self-empowerment and social justice. We are returning for a second time to Caretta because most of the 2004 participants said the experience was the highlight of their institute. Therefore, we seek scholars receptive to combining text-based learning with participatory learning, a natural but sadly uncommon combination that regional study makes easily possible. Between the Ferrum part of the institute and the Caretta part, the institute will spend a weekend at beautiful Breaks Interstate Park on the border of southwestern Virginia and eastern Kentucky.
Berea College Professor of History Gordon B. McKinney will lead off the first week with discussion of antecedents to extensive industrialization in Appalachia, establishing a framework for the kinds of issues Sayles’ movie and responses to it bring up.We will then watch the movie Matewan with an eye first to identifying elements one associates with Appalachian identity (labor issues, gender roles, immigration, religion, music, etc.) and then to analyzing Sayles’ critical methodology and the assumptions behind it. Rebecca Bailey, Assistant Professor of History and Geography at Northern Kentucky University, will then lead considerations of history Sayles either ignored or did not know about. Ferrum College Professor of History Dan Woods will help participants understand the many faces of industrialization and of religion in Appalachia, and Todd Fredericksen, Assistant Professor of Forestry and Wildlife at Ferrum, will explain climatological and geographical reasons for unusual wildlife diversity in the region. 
Blue Ridge Institute and Farm Museum Assistant Director Vaughan Webb will highlight the remarkable scope of historical and contemporary traditional music in Appalachian balladry, blues, gospel, bluegrass, old-time string band tunes, and examine how the regional traditions have adapted to the cultural influences of modernization. Novelist of Italian extraction and later out-migrant from Big Stone Gap, Virginia, Adriana Trigiani will read from her fiction and discuss her journey in and out of Appalachia. Phillip J. Obermiller will then lead sessions both on miner migrants in Appalachia and on how Appalachian study (and other regional study) comments on international regional issues. Ferrum English Professors Tina Hanlon and Lana Whited will discuss what folktales reveal about Appalachian women, while Mary K. Anglin, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Kentucky, will share her intriguing research into women in the western North Carolina mica industry, including how they found ways to exercise control over their lives without labor unions. Finally, poet Frank X. Walker will read from his work, discuss issues that work brings up, describe his formation of a group called the Affrilachian Poets, and lead a poetry writing workshop for all institute scholars.
Dan Woods and labor author George Loveland, Associate Professor of Library Science at Ferrum, will discuss the issue that is central to Sayles’ Matewan—conflict between coal companies and unionizing workers. Loveland will further discuss how workers in a paper mill in Canton, North Carolina, acquired and began to operate their own company. Then Todd Fredericksen will engage the institute with deliberations on Appalachia as a window on global ecological issues. In preparation for the week in Caretta, institute director Peter Crow will share his experiences recording accounts (often with students) about two towns in southwestern Virginia and then shaping those voices into a continuous narrative. Finally, Institute core faculty member and Ferrum Assistant Professor of Sociology Susan Mead will lead organization of Caretta activities, and institute scholars will make progress reports on their projects.