Literacy in the Mountains [electronic resource] : Community, Newspapers, and Writing in Appalachia / Samantha NeCamp.

Lexington : University Press of Kentucky, 2020. (Baltimore, Md. : Project MUSE, 2015)

1 online resource.

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"Scholarship in Appalachian studies has long since illustrated that the representation of Appalachia as backward, isolated, and immobile place in the nineteenth century is inaccurate. Numerous historians have traced the origins of the "idea" of Appalachia in local-color writing and the home missionary movement of the late 1800s. However, relatively little research has sought to specifically address the (un)reality of Appalachian illiteracy in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries-to respond directly to the representations of Appalachia as an illiterate, unschooled, textless society in large part because so little archival evidence exists through which to document literacy practices in the region. In Literacy in the Mountains, author Samantha NeCamp seeks to rediscover perhaps the only extensive archive of Appalachians' representations of their own literacy practices in the period during which the "idea of Appalachia" was first articulated and the takeover of Appalachia by the coal industry was beginning-roughly 1885 to 1920. The archive comes in the form of local newspapers preserved by community libraries that have been digitized by the Chronicling America project. Focusing her efforts in Kentucky, NeCamp examines five local newspapers, including Breathitt County News in Jackson, the Hazel Green Herald in Hazel Green, Big Sandy News in Louisa, Clay City Times (formally Spout Spring Times) in Clay City, and the Mountain Advocate in Barbourville. These periodicals were selected due to their similarities in geographic location and time frame, although each has its own unique milieu and editorial personality. The presence of correspondents from towns and villages throughout Central Appalachia speaks to the reach of the newspapers, the widespread nature of literacy in the area, and to the correspondents' abilities as both readers and writers"-- Provided by publisher.

Books / Online

English

February 06, 2020

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Project Muse.