Research & Grants
Study Abroad in Wales / North Fork of the New River / Pottertown and the Life of Mary Jane Ellison Putzel / The Allen School / Jimmy Carter National Historic Site Oral Histories Project / Eric Ellis Banjo Recording
STUDY ABROAD IN WALES
Next trip tentatively set for Summer 2011
Earn 6 hrs. Graduate or Undergraduate Credit in Anthropology or Appalachian Studies, through ASU's Postindustrial Wales Field School
Students and Dr. Patricia Beaver at Caerphilly Castle in Wales
Faculty: Dr. William Schumann, Dr. Patricia Beaver
Postindustrial Wales exposes students to community-based responses to political, economic and cultural transformations in Welsh society following the final contraction of heavy industry in the 1980s. Students should develop an understanding of the variation in responses to socioeconomic change through community-based internships, meetings with political activists and officials at various levels of government, visitation to cultural events and tourist sites, invited lectures with Welsh scholars, and general interaction in Welsh society. The course is organized around a two week internship program in the south Wales village of Ystradgynlais. Students are assigned to work with area community development organizations, local cultural institutions and businesses, and conduct oral history interviews with village residents to appreciate the multi-faceted character of community response to 'postindustrialism'.
For further information see our Course Schedule page for summer school courses for 2009. You may also contact Dr. Patricia Beaver at beaverpd@appstate.edu or call the Center for Appalachian Studies at 828-262-4089.
Wales Study Abroad Photo Gallery coming soon!
Students Sara Oakley (foreground), Adam Kota and Brad Allen (background) conducting oral histories at the Elk Knob Homecoming Celebration, September 2005
NORTH FORK OF THE NEW RIVER
New River's North Fork Headwaters Research Project
Funding by the Appalachian Regional Commission Collaborative Teaching Project, 2002-2007:
The high elevation ecologies found in what is called the "High Country" of Watauga, Ashe and Avery Counties has been the focus of recent tourism, recreation, and second home developments. Coupled with the federal designation of the 25 western North Carolina counties as the Blue Ridge National Heritage Area, much attention is focused on tourism as a force of economic development in western North Carolina . Historic communities made up of farmers, millers, artisans, store keepers, and a wide range of entrepreneurs dotted the landscape, and the particular ways that agriculturalists and others who used the region's resources contributed to the appeal which the region now boasts for the visitors. Yet preservation of the region's ecologies, and support for maintenance of the region's farm lands, waterways, village centers, artistic and material culture must be part and parcel of the plans for sustainable development.
For six years, research in the North Fork New River region has focused on documenting the region through historical and ethnographic research, focused on community formation and change, migration, economic networks, exchange, commerce, cultural ecology and use of natural resources, and on collaboration with communities for community sustainability. Outcomes to date include 5 MA theses, numerous student conference presentations, and a book manuscript in progress.
With the opening of the Elk Knob State Natural Area in 2004, researchers have collaborated with local residents toward the development of exhibits for the new park which reflect the communities' definitions of themselves. Research focuses on collaboration with community, community narrative, and community representation. A goal is to develop scripts, including digitized images, with accompanying artifacts if appropriate, subject to community approval, for exhibits for the park.
Elk Knob State Natural Area celebrated its opening with a Headwaters Community Day September 24, 2005. Student researchers participated in the opening celebration by taping interviews with elders and scanning photographic images of family photographs.
Based on work over the fall semester with residents of the historic communities of Meat Camp, Pottertown/Tamarack, and Sutherland, we recommend practices which support the sustainability of local communities, including:
- documentation of local history as residents wish themselves to be represented
- public lands policies which include local residents in planning and use policy-making
- support for conservation and protection of fragile high elevation ecologies and headwaters
Inspired in part by Noah Adam's visit to Boone and to Ashe County to collect information on the New River for his book Far Appalachia: Following the New River North (2001), the graduate seminar, ANT 5120, Appalachian Culture and Social Organization, has been directed toward a research collaboration with residents along the north fork of the New River. Since the fall of 2000, students have conducted interviews with local residents, attended events at the Riverview Community Center, visited in community churches, and developed individual research papers and projects focused on the headwaters communities of the north fork of the New River.
Beginning fall semester 2001, students have participated in the Appalachian Regional Commission sponsored Teaching Project, linking the work of classes throughout southern and central Appalachia together in discussions and reports on local communities regarding the development of sustainable communities in Appalachia. Student research topics range from the Civil War, African-American communities, the Sutherland Methodist Church, the Elk Knob Missionary Baptist Church, to the volunteer fire department as a locus of democracy, local family farming, and Hispanic farm workers.
MA theses related to this project include:
Sarah Poteete, 2003, By Their Own Agency: Medical History of Ashe County, NC
Suzanne Savell, 2003, Building Community From Within: The Story of the Riverview Community Center
Vicky Hayes, 2005, The Ballad of Mary Jane
Students in the 2005 class helped with the Elk Knob Homecoming celebrating the opening of the new Elk Knob State Natural Area at the Gap between the Elk and Snake Mountains in Watauga County. They collected photographs and stories which reflect the communities' definitions of themselves with the goal of developing scripts for exhibits for the new park. The emphasis is on collaboration with community, community narrative, and community representation.
POTTERTOWN AND THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF MARY JANE ELLISON PUTZEL
A 1983 graduate of the MA program in Appalachian Studies, Mary Jane Putzel wrote narratives about the history of her community of Pottertown, at the headwaters of the north fork of the New River. As a woman moving between the rural community in the high mountains of Ashe and Watauga Counties, and the industrial town of Lenoir, she also wrote poetry as cultural description and critique. Upon her death in the fall of 2000, Mary Jane's family allowed the Center to duplicate her writings. Research with surviving family members is ongoing, and will be compiled into an edited volume featuring many of her writings.
2005 graduate Vicky Hayes wrote her thesis on Mary Jane, entitled The Ballad of Mary Jane. Hayes explains that her "thesis presents the creative and academic writings of Mary Jane in the context of her history as a Pottertown resident and a 1983 graduate of the Appalachian Studies master's program...[The thesis] explores the relationship of cultural studies to an Appalachian Student...[and] discusses the formative years of a young writer and demonstrates how a particularly enriched and artistic environment can exist in an unlikely setting."
The Allen High School, Asheville, NC
THE ALLEN HIGH SCHOOL
African-Americans in Appalachia Documentation Project
Funding by the University Library, College of Arts and Sciences, Graduate Studies and Research, and University Research Council, 2005
The Allen School was founded in the Asheville area in the late 19th century in response to the dearth of educational opportunities for local African-Americans. It then operated under the direction of the Woman's Home Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church as a boarding school for African-American girls. With integration and the provision of more and better opportunities for African-American students, Allen School closed its doors in 1974. No records of the school were maintained.
Documenting the history of Allen School is crucial because of lack of information on the African-American integration struggle in western North Carolina. The recent 50 year anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education makes this a timely research project. This research is even more important because of the lack of historical documentation of the lives of Black Appalachians, who have been largely invisible in histories of the region. Further, the gendered nature of the project provides significant material to contribute to the neglected histories of women in missions, and black women in general. In regards to the history of the northern missionary movement in post Civil War Appalachia, this information is unprecedented in its recognition of black educational issues alongside the more traditionally dramatized plight of the "white mountaineer." The opportunity to record living voices and firsthand experiences should not be missed (and is quickly passing).
The collection of oral histories of elderly informant--former teachers, students, and family member--is an essential goal, with fifteen interviews conducted to date; full transcriptions of the interviews are housed in the Allen School file in the archives of the W.L. Eury Appalachian Collection. The file includes audio recordings of the interviews, as well as various archival materials collected from informants (see below).
A lengthy list of possible contacts for gathering further information on the Allen School stems from recommendations from interviewees, as well as from print resources including mailing list for the 75 th anniversary class reunion.
Archival collections include:
• Yearbooks- original copies of The Allenite, years 1962 and 1968
• Registration brochures and information booklets
• Programs for special events and concerts
• Photographs and slides
• Allen School newspaper, The Allen Herald, four issues from 1955-1956
• Articles and information on Burnsville protests, integration issues during the school year of 1959-1960
• Newspaper articles from The Asheville Citizen-Times concerning special events, noteworthy students, segregation, reunions, and the death of western North Carolina native, and Allen School alumnus Nina Simone.
• Information on the Woman's Division of the Christian Service in the United Methodist Church
• Reunion and special event information, including Allen School alumni newsletter
JIMMY CARTER NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE ORAL HISTORIES PROJECT
The Center for Appalachian studies received a $13,000 grant in 2006 from the Department of the Interior's National Park Service to conduct audio taped interviews and transcriptions from selected individuals with the objective of gathering institutional information about the Jimmy Carter National Historic Site that will assist the park in creating an Administrative History. Two graduate students are interviewing and video taping individuals during summer 2007.
Oral histories project at Jimmy Carter National Historic Site
Go to: www.news.appstate.edu/2007/07/18/carter/
Former President Jimmy Carter, Mrs. Carter, and Appalachian Studies graduate student, Jennifer Cohen-Jordan
NORTH CAROLINA ARTS COUNCIL
ERIC ELLIS BANJO RECORDING GRANT, $7250
David Haney, PI
Emily Schaad and Leila Weinstein, Co-PI
Eric Ellis was born in 1958 and grew up in Wilkes County. Ellis learned to play thorugh self-tuition and family influence. His maternal grandfather, Ed Pierce, played banjo, his uncle, Bill Johnson of Miller's Creek, helped to make his first banjo, and his cousin, David Johnson is a well-known fiddler. His father and maternal grandfather also played music. Eric has won several banjo contests including the state banjo title at the North Carolilna State Fiddlers's Convention (1976, 1978), the Galax Old Fiddlers' Convention (1981), and the state title at the Mountain State Fair in Asheville (2004). He has also played and recorded with many historically important bluegrass musicians including Jim Shumate, Charlie Monroe, Chubby Wise, and Wes Golding and Surefire. He stood in for Bela Fleck when the Tony Rice Unit played with Jim Buchanan at the Birchmere (a renowned venue in Alexandri, VA) in 1985, and was a member of the Bluegrass Times, Wells Fargo, and was a founding member of Ric-O-Chet.
The first goal of this project is to produce a high-quality CD by a musician who, although well-known in bluegrass circles, has not yet reached the wider audience he deserves. This CD will enable Eric Ellis to receive both recognition and income from an audience that has known him only in a supporting role, as well as from those who do not know him at all.
The second goal will be to document an important participant in the rich musical history of Wilkes County. Bluegrass banjo was perfected by North Carolinians such as Earl Scruggs and Don Reno, but Wilkes County is particularly important in the history of bluegrass as the hometown of the Church Brothers, a significant early bluegrass band; Blue Ridge Records, a record company that recorded the Church Brothers; the Stanley Brothers and others during the 1950s; and numerous musicians who went on to play with regional and national acts. Liner notes will place Eric Ellis' music in this regional context.
The product of this grant will be a professional audio recording on CD, featuring Eric Ellis' banjo playing and outstanding ensemble leadership skills. It will be recorded at Star Recording Studio in Miller's Creek, NC on a 16-track 2-inch analog tape, and mixed to a digital format by David Johnson. It will be professionally mastered and duplicated by Oasis, and promoted through performances, reviews in bluegrass print and media outlets, as a CD release concert at Appalachian State University. Extensive liner notes will be provided by the production team. The CD, as well as taped interviews and performances, will be archived in the W. L. Eury Appalachian Collection at Appalachian State University. Production will be overseen by Eric Ellis and David Haney.
For more information and publicity, please see the following links:
http://www.thebluegrassblog.com/eric-ellis-to-record/
http://www.mountainhomemusic.com/Dave&Eric.html
For further information, please contact Dr. Beaver at 828-262-4089 or beaverpd@appstate.edu.
OTHER RESEARCH OPPORTUNITIES:
