Appendix E: Key Studies in Appalachian Scholarship

This appendix provides annotated descriptions of twenty-five foundational works in Appalachian studies. For each, we include the citation, a brief summary, an assessment of its significance to the field, and the chapters of this textbook it most directly informs. These works represent the essential reading list for anyone seeking to understand Appalachian history in depth.

1. Henry D. Shapiro, Appalachia on Our Mind (1978)

Citation: Shapiro, Henry D. Appalachia on Our Mind: The Southern Mountains and Mountaineers in the American Consciousness, 1870-1920. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1978.

Summary: Shapiro argues that "Appalachia" as a concept was constructed by outsiders in the late nineteenth century. He traces how local color writers, missionaries, settlement school founders, and social reformers collectively created the idea of Appalachia as a distinct, backward, and isolated region in need of outside intervention. The mountains were not "discovered" -- they were invented as a problem.

Significance: The single most influential work in Appalachian studies. Shapiro fundamentally reframed the field by shifting attention from the question "What is wrong with Appalachia?" to the question "Why do people think something is wrong with Appalachia?" Every subsequent work on Appalachian identity, stereotypes, and representation engages with Shapiro.

Textbook chapters: Ch. 14, 35, App. C.

2. Ronald D. Eller, Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers (1982)

Citation: Eller, Ronald D. Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers: Industrialization of the Appalachian South, 1880-1930. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1982.

Summary: Eller documents the transformation of Appalachia from a pre-industrial agrarian society to an industrial resource colony between 1880 and 1930. He traces how railroads, land agents, and corporate interests systematically acquired land and mineral rights, displacing subsistence communities and creating the coalfield economy.

Significance: Established the standard narrative of Appalachian industrialization. Eller's structural analysis -- emphasizing outside capital, absentee ownership, and systemic exploitation rather than cultural deficiency -- became the foundation of modern Appalachian historiography.

Textbook chapters: Ch. 15, 16, 17, 18, 32.

3. Ronald D. Eller, Uneven Ground (2008)

Citation: Eller, Ronald D. Uneven Ground: Appalachia Since 1945. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2008.

Summary: A sequel to Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers, extending the narrative through the War on Poverty, the environmental movement, and into the twenty-first century. Eller argues that federal anti-poverty programs addressed symptoms while leaving the structural causes of Appalachian poverty -- particularly absentee ownership and extractive economics -- intact.

Significance: The definitive account of post-World War II Appalachian history. Essential for understanding why the War on Poverty produced limited results and why the extraction pattern persists.

Textbook chapters: Ch. 22, 23, 32, 37.

4. John Gaventa, Power and Powerlessness (1980)

Citation: Gaventa, John. Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1980.

Summary: Using the Clear Fork Valley of Tennessee as a case study, Gaventa applies Steven Lukes's three-dimensional model of power to explain why exploited communities do not always resist. He argues that power operates not only through direct coercion but through the shaping of political agendas and the manipulation of consciousness itself.

Significance: One of the most important works of political theory to emerge from Appalachian studies. Gaventa's analysis explains quiescence without resorting to cultural pathology and provides the theoretical foundation for the internal colonialism framework.

Textbook chapters: Ch. 41, App. C.

5. Wilma A. Dunaway, The First American Frontier (1996)

Citation: Dunaway, Wilma A. The First American Frontier: Transition to Capitalism in Southern Appalachia, 1700-1860. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.

Summary: Dunaway uses world-systems theory to demonstrate that Appalachia was integrated into the capitalist world economy from the earliest period of European settlement. She documents the ginseng trade, livestock droving, iron furnaces, and salt works as evidence that the region was never the isolated, self-sufficient backwater of popular imagination.

Significance: Decisively dismantled the isolation thesis. Dunaway's work forced a fundamental revision of how scholars understand the pre-industrial Appalachian economy.

Textbook chapters: Ch. 5, 6, 7, App. C.

6. Wilma A. Dunaway, Slavery in the American Mountain South (2003)

Citation: Dunaway, Wilma A. Slavery in the American Mountain South. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Summary: Dunaway documents the extent and significance of slavery in the Appalachian region, challenging the myth that the mountains were slave-free. She demonstrates that enslaved people were present in nearly every mountain county and played essential roles in industrial operations (salt works, iron furnaces) and agriculture.

Significance: The most comprehensive treatment of mountain slavery. Essential reading for understanding why the "no slavery in the mountains" myth persists and whose interests it serves.

Textbook chapters: Ch. 6, 12.

7. David Alan Corbin, Life, Work, and Rebellion in the Coal Fields (1981)

Citation: Corbin, David Alan. Life, Work, and Rebellion in the Coal Fields: The Southern West Virginia Miners, 1880-1922. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981.

Summary: Corbin reconstructs the daily lives and labor struggles of southern West Virginia coal miners from the industry's arrival through the mine wars. He demonstrates that miner resistance was not spontaneous violence but organized, strategic class struggle rooted in community solidarity.

Significance: Transformed understanding of the mine wars from tales of primitive violence to sophisticated labor history. Corbin centers miners' agency and strategic thinking.

Textbook chapters: Ch. 16, 17.

8. Dwight B. Billings and Kathleen M. Blee, The Road to Poverty (2000)

Citation: Billings, Dwight B., and Kathleen M. Blee. The Road to Poverty: The Making of Wealth and Hardship in Appalachia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Summary: Through a comparative study of two eastern Kentucky counties -- one that became coal-dependent and one that did not -- Billings and Blee demonstrate that persistent poverty is the product of specific historical decisions and structural arrangements, not cultural traits.

Significance: Provides the most rigorous empirical refutation of the culture-of-poverty thesis as applied to Appalachia. The comparative method isolates structural variables from cultural ones.

Textbook chapters: Ch. 23, 34, App. C.

9. Harry M. Caudill, Night Comes to the Cumberlands (1963)

Citation: Caudill, Harry M. Night Comes to the Cumberlands: A Biography of a Depressed Area. Boston: Little, Brown, 1963.

Summary: A native eastern Kentucky lawyer's passionate account of how absentee corporations exploited the Cumberland Plateau, extracting wealth while leaving behind poverty and environmental devastation. The book brought national attention to Appalachian conditions and helped inspire the War on Poverty.

Significance: The single most influential popular book on Appalachia. While later scholars have critiqued Caudill's romanticization of pre-industrial mountain life and some racial characterizations, his structural argument about extraction remains powerful.

Textbook chapters: Ch. 23.

10. Elizabeth Catte, What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia (2018)

Citation: Catte, Elizabeth. What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia. Cleveland: Belt Publishing, 2018.

Summary: A concise, forceful response to the narrative about Appalachia that crystallized around Hillbilly Elegy and the 2016 election. Catte argues for the region's diversity, centers its radical political traditions, and insists on structural rather than cultural explanations for poverty.

Significance: Became the most widely read Appalachian studies work of the twenty-first century, introducing a new generation to the field's core arguments. Its accessibility made scholarly critiques of stereotyping available to a general audience.

Textbook chapters: Ch. 34, 35.

11. Joe William Trotter Jr., Coal, Class, and Color (1990)

Citation: Trotter, Joe William, Jr. Coal, Class, and Color: Blacks in Southern West Virginia, 1915-32. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990.

Summary: Trotter documents the experiences of Black coal miners in southern West Virginia, examining their recruitment, working conditions, community life, and complex relationship with both white miners and the UMWA.

Significance: Essential for understanding the racial diversity of the coalfields and the dynamics of interracial labor organizing. Challenges the whitewashing of Appalachian labor history.

Textbook chapters: Ch. 19, 40.

12. Theda Perdue, Cherokee Women (1998)

Citation: Perdue, Theda. Cherokee Women: Gender and Culture Change, 1700-1835. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998.

Summary: Perdue examines how Cherokee women's roles -- in agriculture, governance, and family life -- were transformed by European contact and colonization. She demonstrates that Cherokee society was matrilineal and that women held significant political and economic power.

Significance: Foundational for understanding gender in pre-contact and early contact Appalachia. Perdue's work insists that Cherokee history is not a prelude to European settlement but a subject in its own right.

Textbook chapters: Ch. 3, 9.

13. John R. Finger, The Eastern Band of Cherokees, 1819-1900 (1984)

Citation: Finger, John R. The Eastern Band of Cherokees, 1819-1900. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1984.

Summary: The definitive account of how the Eastern Band survived the Trail of Tears and maintained their presence in the mountains through legal maneuvering, land purchases, and sheer persistence.

Significance: Essential for understanding Indigenous persistence in Appalachia. Finger's detailed reconstruction of the Qualla Boundary's creation provides the historical foundation for modern Eastern Band sovereignty.

Textbook chapters: Ch. 4, 39.

14. Cecelia Conway, African Banjo Echoes in Appalachia (1995)

Citation: Conway, Cecelia. African Banjo Echoes in Appalachia: A Study of Folk Traditions. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1995.

Summary: Conway traces the African origins of the banjo and documents its transmission from enslaved African Americans to white mountain musicians, demonstrating that the instrument most associated with Appalachian culture has African roots.

Significance: Fundamentally challenges the narrative of Appalachian music as purely European in origin and demonstrates the centrality of Black contributions to the region's cultural identity.

Textbook chapters: Ch. 27.

15. Steven Stoll, Ramp Hollow (2017)

Citation: Stoll, Steven. Ramp Hollow: The Ordeal of Appalachia. New York: Hill and Wang, 2017.

Summary: Stoll argues that Appalachian poverty was created by the systematic dispossession of mountain people from the commons -- the shared forests, streams, and open range that sustained subsistence communities. When industrial interests enclosed the commons, they destroyed an economy and created dependency.

Significance: Provides a powerful theoretical framework connecting Appalachian dispossession to global patterns of enclosure and primitive accumulation. Links Appalachian history to broader debates about capitalism and inequality.

Textbook chapters: Ch. 7, 15, 41.

16. Deborah Vansau McCauley, Appalachian Mountain Religion (1995)

Citation: McCauley, Deborah Vansau. Appalachian Mountain Religion: A History. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995.

Summary: McCauley argues that Appalachian religious traditions constitute a distinctive American religious culture, not a degraded version of mainstream Protestantism. She traces the theological roots and social functions of Baptist, Holiness, and Pentecostal traditions in the mountains.

Significance: The most comprehensive scholarly treatment of Appalachian religion. McCauley's work challenges the tendency to sensationalize mountain religion (particularly snake handling) at the expense of understanding its depth and diversity.

Textbook chapters: Ch. 8, 29.

17. Walt Wolfram and Donna Christian, Appalachian Speech (1976)

Citation: Wolfram, Walt, and Donna Christian. Appalachian Speech. Arlington, VA: Center for Applied Linguistics, 1976.

Summary: A systematic linguistic analysis of Appalachian English, documenting its grammatical, phonological, and lexical features and tracing their historical origins. Wolfram and Christian demonstrate that Appalachian English is a rule-governed dialect, not "bad English."

Significance: Foundational for the scholarly study of Appalachian language and for combating linguistic discrimination. Established that dialect features dismissed as errors are in fact systematic and historically traceable.

Textbook chapters: Ch. 31.

18. Beth Macy, Dopesick (2018)

Citation: Macy, Beth. Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America. New York: Little, Brown, 2018.

Summary: Macy traces the opioid epidemic from Purdue Pharma's marketing of OxyContin through the transition to heroin and fentanyl, grounding the narrative in the experiences of affected communities in Virginia and West Virginia.

Significance: The most widely read account of the opioid crisis in Appalachia. Macy's reporting connects corporate malfeasance to community devastation and challenges narratives that blame victims.

Textbook chapters: Ch. 33.

19. Harriette Arnow, The Dollmaker (1954)

Citation: Arnow, Harriette. The Dollmaker. New York: Macmillan, 1954.

Summary: A novel following Gertie Nevels, a Kentucky mountain woman who moves to Detroit during World War II. Arnow depicts the cultural displacement, economic pressures, and spiritual loss of Appalachian migration with devastating precision.

Significance: Widely regarded as the greatest Appalachian novel. The Dollmaker humanized the out-migration experience for a national audience and remains a touchstone of Appalachian literary identity.

Textbook chapters: Ch. 20, 28.

20. John C. Inscoe, ed., Appalachians and Race (2001)

Citation: Inscoe, John C., ed. Appalachians and Race: The Mountain South from Slavery to Segregation. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2001.

Summary: An edited collection of essays examining the role of race in Appalachian history, from slavery through the Jim Crow era. Contributors address slavery, emancipation, racial violence, Black community building, and the construction of "white Appalachia."

Significance: The most important single volume on race in Appalachian history. Inscoe's collection demonstrates that race is not peripheral to but constitutive of the Appalachian experience.

Textbook chapters: Ch. 6, 12, 40.

21. Lon Savage, Thunder in the Mountains (1990)

Citation: Savage, Lon. Thunder in the Mountains: The West Virginia Mine War, 1920-21. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1990.

Summary: A detailed narrative history of the events leading to and including the Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest armed insurrection in the United States since the Civil War.

Significance: The standard narrative account of Blair Mountain. Savage's vivid reconstruction brought this largely forgotten episode to wider attention and provided the historical foundation for subsequent preservation efforts.

Textbook chapters: Ch. 17, 26.

22. Thomas P. Slaughter, The Whiskey Rebellion (1986)

Citation: Slaughter, Thomas P. The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.

Summary: Slaughter contextualizes the Whiskey Rebellion as a conflict between frontier economic realities and eastern governmental authority, arguing that the rebels had legitimate grievances rooted in the structural inequalities of the early republic.

Significance: Reframes the Whiskey Rebellion from a footnote about lawless frontiersmen into a foundational episode in Appalachian political identity and the relationship between mountain communities and federal authority.

Textbook chapters: Ch. 10.

23. Shirley Stewart Burns, Bringing Down the Mountains (2007)

Citation: Burns, Shirley Stewart. Bringing Down the Mountains: The Impact of Mountaintop Removal on Southern West Virginia Communities. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2007.

Summary: Burns documents the human and environmental impact of mountaintop removal mining on southern West Virginia communities, combining personal testimony with environmental data and policy analysis.

Significance: One of the first comprehensive academic treatments of mountaintop removal's community impact. Burns centers the voices of affected residents, providing essential testimony for understanding the human costs of surface mining.

Textbook chapters: Ch. 24.

24. Anne Case and Angus Deaton, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism (2020)

Citation: Case, Anne, and Angus Deaton. Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020.

Summary: Economists Case and Deaton document the rising mortality among white working-class Americans from suicide, drug overdose, and alcoholic liver disease, and argue that these deaths reflect the collapse of working-class economic and social structures.

Significance: The "deaths of despair" framework has been widely applied to Appalachia, where the trends Case and Deaton identify are especially pronounced. Their work connects Appalachian health outcomes to national patterns of inequality and deindustrialization.

Textbook chapters: Ch. 33, 38.

25. Frank X Walker, Affrilachia: Poems (2000)

Citation: Walker, Frank X. Affrilachia: Poems. Lexington, KY: Old Cove Press, 2000.

Summary: Walker's poetry collection gave a name and a literary voice to Black Appalachian identity, coining the term "Affrilachian" to claim a space erased by both mainstream American and mainstream Appalachian narratives.

Significance: A founding document of the Affrilachian movement. Walker's work insists that Black people are and always have been part of Appalachia, challenging the region's constructed whiteness through art.

Textbook chapters: Ch. 28, 40.

This list represents a starting point, not a comprehensive bibliography. For additional works, see the Bibliography and the Further Reading sections within each chapter. The field of Appalachian studies continues to grow, and new works are published annually that extend, challenge, and enrich the scholarship described here.