Mode of Program Participation
Academic Scholarship
Participation Type
Paper
Presentation #1 Title
The Appalachian in Exile: redrawing regional boundary lines with the poetic imaginaries of a wandering, mountainous body
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
Using personal poetry, written while traveling back and forth between three continents, and my own and critical investigations, I look at what the Appalachian body can tell us about the systemic and intersecting relationships between the self, language, and place. As the Appalachian dis-places herself from her home, and as she travels back and forth out of the region, tracing the lines between here and there, home and elsewhere, I contend that the boundaries of Appalachia are made strange. I use my personal experience to indicate how such wandering bodies untrace and retrace the boundary lines of the region, reveling in its fluidness. That is, the boundary lines of this space, between Vermont and Georgia, do not end with the mountain range, but are extended outward into infinitum, as bodies claim and extend the limits within their own corporealities. Thus, I claim the performative role of the Appalachian in Exile, employing a Foucaultian methodology that emphasizes limitations and discursivity. This methodology also includes Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of reterritorialization, and Anzaldúa’s Borderlands, in order to highlight the performativity of place and self within language. Ultimately, I argue that not only are the conceptualization of travel and displacement complicated through the relationship between language and self, but that the concept of “home” is made suspect, as Appalachia operates, not as a static or defined entity, but as rhizomatic articulations (re)produced continually by the bodies that travel both within and outside its geographical assemblages.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Shelby Ward is a doctoral student in the Alliance for Social, Political, Ethical, and Cultural Thought at Virginia Tech. Ward is co-editor for SPECTRA (the Social, Political, Ethical, and Cultural Theory Archives), a peer-reviewed and open-access journal, and serves as president of the ASPECT Student Association and Alumni Director.
The Appalachian in Exile: redrawing regional boundary lines with the poetic imaginaries of a wandering, mountainous body
Using personal poetry, written while traveling back and forth between three continents, and my own and critical investigations, I look at what the Appalachian body can tell us about the systemic and intersecting relationships between the self, language, and place. As the Appalachian dis-places herself from her home, and as she travels back and forth out of the region, tracing the lines between here and there, home and elsewhere, I contend that the boundaries of Appalachia are made strange. I use my personal experience to indicate how such wandering bodies untrace and retrace the boundary lines of the region, reveling in its fluidness. That is, the boundary lines of this space, between Vermont and Georgia, do not end with the mountain range, but are extended outward into infinitum, as bodies claim and extend the limits within their own corporealities. Thus, I claim the performative role of the Appalachian in Exile, employing a Foucaultian methodology that emphasizes limitations and discursivity. This methodology also includes Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of reterritorialization, and Anzaldúa’s Borderlands, in order to highlight the performativity of place and self within language. Ultimately, I argue that not only are the conceptualization of travel and displacement complicated through the relationship between language and self, but that the concept of “home” is made suspect, as Appalachia operates, not as a static or defined entity, but as rhizomatic articulations (re)produced continually by the bodies that travel both within and outside its geographical assemblages.
