Mode of Program Participation
Academic Scholarship
Participation Type
Paper
Presentation #1 Title
A Colonial Imperative in Appalachia: Missionaries, Educators, and the Institutionalization of Inequality
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
This paper tells an empirically rich and systematic story about the formation and maintenance of missionary and educator networks in southwestern Virginia, especially in the village of Konnarock, where the Lutheran sponsored Konnarock Training School for girls was built and operated for over 30 years. Adopting a critical perspective, I use Inayatullah and Blaney’s concept of “the colonial imperative” (2004, 13) to examine how social differences were constructed and managed by missionaries and educators. I focus specifically on working the historically and theoretically informed narrative around three analytical tools (encounter, brokerage, and inscription) that usefully offer a plausible account of two conjoined and ongoing processes: the formation and maintenance of inequality in a particular place, and how that inequality serves to legitimate a variety of interventions: political, cultural and economic. This research contributes to existing lines of argument on the role Appalachia functions as a constitutive other of an emerging ‘white’ middle class and professional America at the turn of the 20th century.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Jacob L. Stump is Visiting Assitant Professor of International Studies.
Presentation #2 Title
A Colonial Imperative in Appalachia: Writing a Strange Mountain and a Peculiar Man
Presentation #2 Abstract or Summary
Since the emergence of postcolonial studies, travel writing has been conceptualized as a key instrument in making the colonizer-colonized relationship possible. Analysis and critique have focused primarily on the relationship between the global north and the global south, especially Europeans writing about non-Europeans. This paper takes insights from postcolonial studies of travel writing andturns them toward the study of ‘Appalachia.’ In contrast to most travel writing, my analysis is focused on what the global north has to say about itself, and particularly what ‘America’ and ‘Americans’ have to say about ‘Appalachia’ at the turn of the 20th century. In short, I argue that ‘Appalachia’ represented an internal, sub-regional ‘other’ to the rapidly professionalizing, urbanizing, and increasingly connected, modern ‘America.’ This paper’s empirical focus is on a unique, heretofore unexamined example of local color writing: Charles B. Coale’s The Life and Adventures of Wilburn Waters, which depicted Whitetop Mountain as a strange, abundant, and dangerous land and Wilburn Waters a peculiar but familiar man stuck in the past. I conclude with some reflections on the colonial project, and the ways in which the colonial imperative emerged in ‘Appalachia.’
A Colonial Imperative in Appalachia: Missionaries, Educators, and the Institutionalization of Inequality
This paper tells an empirically rich and systematic story about the formation and maintenance of missionary and educator networks in southwestern Virginia, especially in the village of Konnarock, where the Lutheran sponsored Konnarock Training School for girls was built and operated for over 30 years. Adopting a critical perspective, I use Inayatullah and Blaney’s concept of “the colonial imperative” (2004, 13) to examine how social differences were constructed and managed by missionaries and educators. I focus specifically on working the historically and theoretically informed narrative around three analytical tools (encounter, brokerage, and inscription) that usefully offer a plausible account of two conjoined and ongoing processes: the formation and maintenance of inequality in a particular place, and how that inequality serves to legitimate a variety of interventions: political, cultural and economic. This research contributes to existing lines of argument on the role Appalachia functions as a constitutive other of an emerging ‘white’ middle class and professional America at the turn of the 20th century.
