Participation Type
Paper
Session Title
Session 10.01 Environment and Ecology
Presentation #1 Title
Oxyana and Cottonland: Exploring Regional Identity in Post-industrial Appalachia and Atlantic Canada
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
This paper compares two recent documentaries on prescription drug addiction, Oxyana (2013) and Cottonland (2006). Both documentaries examine the impact of Oxycontin and other painkillers on two post-industrial coal mining towns, Oceana, West Virginia, and Glace Bay, Nova Scotia. In exploring common themes that emerge in both documentaries – an over-abundance of pain medication available in communities where miners were told to work through pain, the isolation of these places and their alienation from larger urban settings, the discrepancy between their beautiful natural settings and towns destroyed by crime and addiction, and the bodies of drug users – this paper will suggest that there are connections between Atlantic Canada and Appalachia that political boundaries and conventional approaches to regionalism obscure. In addition to calling attention to similarities between post-industrial towns on North America’s eastern seaboard, this paper will examine the complex role that coal mining plays in defining cultural identity in parts of Atlantic Canada and Appalachia. In spite of the environmental damage and health-related impacts of the mining industry on these towns, interviewees express a degree of nostalgia for a time when working in the mines connected people to the landscape, provided continuity between generations, fuelled patriarchal ideals surrounding work and the family, and anchored regional identity. This paper will pay particular attention to the reception of these films, especially the controversy Oxyana sparked in West Virginia.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Peter Thompson is an Assistant Professor in the School of Canadian Studies at Carleton Unversity. His research examines regional identity in contemporary literature and visual culture and focuses specifically on Atlantic Canada.
Oxyana and Cottonland: Exploring Regional Identity in Post-industrial Appalachia and Atlantic Canada
Corbly Hall 244
This paper compares two recent documentaries on prescription drug addiction, Oxyana (2013) and Cottonland (2006). Both documentaries examine the impact of Oxycontin and other painkillers on two post-industrial coal mining towns, Oceana, West Virginia, and Glace Bay, Nova Scotia. In exploring common themes that emerge in both documentaries – an over-abundance of pain medication available in communities where miners were told to work through pain, the isolation of these places and their alienation from larger urban settings, the discrepancy between their beautiful natural settings and towns destroyed by crime and addiction, and the bodies of drug users – this paper will suggest that there are connections between Atlantic Canada and Appalachia that political boundaries and conventional approaches to regionalism obscure. In addition to calling attention to similarities between post-industrial towns on North America’s eastern seaboard, this paper will examine the complex role that coal mining plays in defining cultural identity in parts of Atlantic Canada and Appalachia. In spite of the environmental damage and health-related impacts of the mining industry on these towns, interviewees express a degree of nostalgia for a time when working in the mines connected people to the landscape, provided continuity between generations, fuelled patriarchal ideals surrounding work and the family, and anchored regional identity. This paper will pay particular attention to the reception of these films, especially the controversy Oxyana sparked in West Virginia.
