Participation Type
Panel
Session Title
Session 6.12 (Appalachian Studies) Pedagogy and Practices: New Resources for Teaching Appalachian Studies
Session Abstract or Summary
This panel introduces the membership to the pedagogical practices of three faculty members at three different institutions of higher learning who are utilizing Appalachian studies in the undergraduate classroom. This panel is organized by the education committee of the Appalachian Studies Association.
The panel explores three different, innovative undergraduate teaching scenarios--museum artifacts in hands-on learning; global Appalachia in writing across the curriculum; and sustainability in Appalachian ethnomusicology. Panelists will explain their pedagogical practices, highlighting the teaching goals that inclusion of Appalachian content--or Appalachian content approached in a new way--supports and the classroom challenges such regional content helps mitigate. Audience members will emerge with a greater understanding of the variety of teaching environments in which Appalachian studies content proves beneficial for student learning and invigorating for faculty instruction, including a campus-wide engagement with Appalachian studies at Berea College; a writing across the curriculum focus in composition and rhetoric instruction at Appalachian State University; and a re-imagining of the role of sustainability in the study of ethnomusicology at East Tennessee State University.
Presentation #1 Title
Developing and Using Artifact Encounter Pedagogy in the Loyal Jones Appalachian Center at Berea College
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
In 2000 Berea College made a deliberate decision to redevelop the use of its Appalachian artifacts collection from a public museum model to an Appalachian Studies Teaching Collection. This decision changed every aspect of managing and using the 4,000-object collection--storage practices, access policies, staffing, curatorial approach, and collections development. But perhaps the most important change was that it required the Curator to develop a pedagogy of artifact encounters to engage with the curriculum, courses, and the work of faculty. Beginning with the axiom that curricular integration of the collections is the highest priority, and facing the reality that at a small liberal arts college like Berea, this required working across the curriculum, the Curator focused on developing pedagogical tools and frameworks involving artifact encounters, rather than a focus on Appalachian content. He designed a variety of pedagogical models for integrating encounters with Appalachian Artifacts into course of all types and lengths, from 50 minutes to two hours. The Curator describes the process as "evolving from seeing myself as a museum professional to seeing myself as a college educator who uses museum methods." For fourteen years highly-structured, in-class Appalachian artifact encounters have been a part of dozens of Berea College courses sessions each year, from Appalachian Studies to General Studies, and Sociology to Child and Family Studies. This program continues to evolve. This presentation will explore the development of the pedagogy, explore key concepts, and outline several of the highly-structured, in-class models used.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Katherine Ledford is assistant professor of Appalachian studies and program director for the master's degree in Appalachian studies at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. Each spring she teaches "Pedagogy for Appalachian Studies," a seminar that prepares graduate students to teach undergraduate classes on Appalachian studies topics.
Presentation #2 Title
Teaching Writing in the College Classroom through Global Connections to Appalachia
Presentation #2 Abstract or Summary
My presentation explains how I incorporate best practices in the fields of rhetoric and composition and Appalachian studies in order to integrate global learning into composition courses. The goals of the second-year composition course at Appalachian State University, "Writing across the Curriculum," require that students explore various academic writing genres across disciplines. The Appalachian region offers students opportunities to begin to explore and disseminate information about existing issues within their fields of study. I require students to find and explore those issues within the global community, but outside the United States. As students work and write their way through the semester, they also seek out Appalachian/global connections found in images and video, thereby integrating multi-modal pedagogical practices in the classroom.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #2
Christopher A. Miller is associate director and curator of the Loyal Jones Appalachian Center at Berea College. He has been at Berea College for twenty-one years and in the Appalachian Center for fourteen years. In addition to serving as curator, he has served as associate director of the center since 2007. He was interim director of the center during the 2005-2006 academic year. Miller was also a Fulbright Scholar to Ukraine in 2011 and 2014. He holds a master's degree in history and a graduate certificate in museum studies. Prior to coming to Berea, he was exhibit curator at the Minnesota History Center.
Presentation #3 Title
Integrating Teaching: Music, Appalachian Studies, and Sustainability
Presentation #3 Abstract or Summary
Ideas and practices related to sustainability have become more common in academia since the foundation of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education network and the growing currency of all things "green" in the business, structure, and daily life of higher education. In discussing elements of sustainability that I have incorporated into a course entitled "Ethnomusicology and Appalachia," I show how they are not part of a trend, but are foundational and transformative parts of both Appalachian studies and the study of people making music. Ethnomusicology is based in ideas of “music as culture” and as the study of musical activity, not idealized and autonomous “musical objects” (per Rice). Considering sustainability challenges notions of autonomy, which is crucial to understanding Appalachia's fluid tension (as described by Filene) between "insider" roots and "outsider" pressures. Essential scholarship on regional music-making by Jeff Titon is a model of this kind of integration, both in terms of compassionate and broad consideration of “musical sound” and in the socioaesthetic (per Kisliuk) ramifications of his conclusions. I will conclude my presentation by leading participants on an abbreviated soundwalk (per Westerkamp and Ferrington) to emphasize the importance of integrated and humane consideration in the study of music and Appalachia
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #3
Donna Corriher is a lecturer of rhetoric and composition at Appalachian State University. She earned the master's degree in literature as well as the master's degree in Appalachian studies, along with the graduate certificate in rhetoric and composition, at Appalachian State University
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #4
Lee Bidgood is a musician and scholar working on American string band music, historically-informed performance practice, improvisation, sustainability, and faith. Assistant Professor in the Department of Appalachian Studies at East Tennessee State University, Bidgood also teaches courses in Bluegrass, Old Time and Country Music Studies.
Developing and Using Artifact Encounter Pedagogy in the Loyal Jones Appalachian Center at Berea College
In 2000 Berea College made a deliberate decision to redevelop the use of its Appalachian artifacts collection from a public museum model to an Appalachian Studies Teaching Collection. This decision changed every aspect of managing and using the 4,000-object collection--storage practices, access policies, staffing, curatorial approach, and collections development. But perhaps the most important change was that it required the Curator to develop a pedagogy of artifact encounters to engage with the curriculum, courses, and the work of faculty. Beginning with the axiom that curricular integration of the collections is the highest priority, and facing the reality that at a small liberal arts college like Berea, this required working across the curriculum, the Curator focused on developing pedagogical tools and frameworks involving artifact encounters, rather than a focus on Appalachian content. He designed a variety of pedagogical models for integrating encounters with Appalachian Artifacts into course of all types and lengths, from 50 minutes to two hours. The Curator describes the process as "evolving from seeing myself as a museum professional to seeing myself as a college educator who uses museum methods." For fourteen years highly-structured, in-class Appalachian artifact encounters have been a part of dozens of Berea College courses sessions each year, from Appalachian Studies to General Studies, and Sociology to Child and Family Studies. This program continues to evolve. This presentation will explore the development of the pedagogy, explore key concepts, and outline several of the highly-structured, in-class models used.
