Chapter 14 Further Reading: The "Discovery" of Appalachia

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. The foundational scholarly work on the construction of "Appalachia" as a concept in American culture. Shapiro's argument — that the region was invented rather than discovered, and that the invention served interests outside the mountains — transformed the field of Appalachian studies and remains indispensable. Dense but rewarding reading that will fundamentally change how you think about regional identity and the power of representation.

Batteau, Allen W. The Invention of Appalachia. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1990. Building on Shapiro's work, Batteau examines how the concept of "Appalachia" was created through literature, reform movements, and government programs. He traces the invention from the local color writers through the War on Poverty and argues that each generation of "discoverers" reinvented the region to serve its own needs. Particularly strong on the political economy of representation.

Frost, William Goodell. "Our Contemporary Ancestors in the Southern Mountains." The Atlantic Monthly 83 (March 1899): 311–319. The primary source itself. Available in digitized form through HathiTrust and the Internet Archive. Reading Frost directly — rather than relying on summaries — is essential for understanding the rhetorical power of his argument and the assumptions embedded in every sentence. A short essay that repays close, critical reading.

Whisnant, David E. All That Is Native and Fine: The Politics of Culture in an American Region. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983. A masterful study of the cultural politics of the settlement school movement and related institutions. Whisnant examines how outsiders — settlement school workers, folklorists, craft revival organizers — selected, shaped, and marketed Appalachian culture for outside consumption, often with devastating consequences for the communities they claimed to serve. Essential reading for understanding the settlement school movement in its full complexity.

Stoddart, Jess, ed. The Quare Women's Journals: May Stone and Katherine Pettit's Summers in the Kentucky Mountains and the Founding of the Hindman Settlement School. Ashland, KY: Jesse Stuart Foundation, 1997. The personal journals and letters of the Hindman Settlement School founders, providing direct access to their motivations, assumptions, and daily experiences. These documents reveal both the genuine compassion and the deep condescension that characterized the settlement school movement. Invaluable primary source material.

Greene, James S. Sold on Appalachia: The Construction and Marketing of Appalachian "Otherness." Dissertation, University of Kentucky, 2004. A scholarly study of how Appalachia has been marketed — as a problem to be solved, a culture to be preserved, and a destination to be consumed — from the local color era to the present. Greene's analysis of the economic incentives driving the construction of Appalachian "otherness" is particularly relevant to this chapter's themes.

Weller, Jack E. Yesterday's People: Life in Contemporary Appalachia. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1965. The most influential application of the "culture of poverty" thesis to Appalachia. Weller's book is included here not as a model to emulate but as a primary source to understand — a document that reveals how the "contemporary ancestors" framework was updated for the War on Poverty era. Read it critically, alongside the responses it provoked from Appalachian scholars.

Catte, Elizabeth. What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia. Cleveland: Belt Publishing, 2018. A sharp, concise critique of the modern stereotyping of Appalachia that traces the intellectual lineage from the local color writers through J.D. Vance. Catte is particularly effective at identifying the continuities between nineteenth-century "discovery" literature and twenty-first-century media representations. Accessible, argumentative, and an excellent companion to this chapter.

Fox, John Jr. The Trail of the Lonesome Pine. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1908. The bestselling novel that defined Appalachia for a generation of American readers. Fox's portrayal of the mountains as both romantically beautiful and desperately in need of civilizing influence epitomizes the local color approach. Reading the novel — particularly its treatment of industrial development as unambiguously positive — provides direct experience of the narrative that this chapter critiques.

Becker, Jane S. Selling Tradition: Appalachia and the Construction of an American Folk, 1930–1940. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998. A study of how Appalachian folk culture was selected, packaged, and marketed during the New Deal era — a process that built directly on the local color and settlement school traditions examined in this chapter. Becker shows how the construction of "authentic" Appalachian culture served economic and political purposes that had little to do with the communities from which the culture was drawn.

Searles, P. David. A College for Appalachia: Alice Lloyd on Caney Creek. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1995. The story of Alice Lloyd, a Boston journalist who founded a college in Knott County, Kentucky, in 1923. Lloyd's institution embodied many of the tensions of the settlement school movement — genuine educational vision combined with outsider assumptions about mountain culture. A useful case study for students interested in the longer arc of outside educational intervention in Appalachia.