Participation Type
Performance
Presentation #1 Title
Some Call It Home: Creative Writing as Exploration of Identity Multiplicity
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
At the Appalachian Study Association’s 2018 conference, I propose an engagement in creative nonfiction and poetry, a multi-genre performance that speaks toward my experience as a queer Appalachian woman teaching community college in central North Carolina. With my multiplicity of identities, I find myself at the intersection of multiple pedagogies while teaching English to largely first-generation and working class students. This performance would engage with the inclusive spaces that I work to build in my classrooms, and explore places in my identity and teaching pedagogies with which I have struggled, such as my self-identification as a first-generation college student turned professor, and former working class woman suddenly thrust solidly into the middle class. Moving back to the region after two years in the Midwest, I have been re-acquainted with my family while beginning teaching at a largely rural community college on the outskirts of the Charlotte metropolitan area. These changes make me question what it means that I am Appalachian and working class, despite, technically, not being either anymore, geographically or economically. Devoted to unraveling and examining my place in academia, family, the queer community, and a geographically liminal region between Appalachia and the South, exploring such issues in poetry and prose will not only illuminate my personal experience as an educator, but also begin conversations about what Appalachian heritage can do when thoughtfully and intentionally enacted in intersectional ways in a college classroom.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Emily Blair is a full-time English lecturer at Mitchell Community College in Iredell County, North Carolina. She is originally from Fort Chiswell, Virginia, and received a B.A. in English from Virginia Tech and an M.A. in English from the University of Louisville. Her creative works can be found online and in print at various venues.
Conference Subthemes
Education
Some Call It Home: Creative Writing as Exploration of Identity Multiplicity
At the Appalachian Study Association’s 2018 conference, I propose an engagement in creative nonfiction and poetry, a multi-genre performance that speaks toward my experience as a queer Appalachian woman teaching community college in central North Carolina. With my multiplicity of identities, I find myself at the intersection of multiple pedagogies while teaching English to largely first-generation and working class students. This performance would engage with the inclusive spaces that I work to build in my classrooms, and explore places in my identity and teaching pedagogies with which I have struggled, such as my self-identification as a first-generation college student turned professor, and former working class woman suddenly thrust solidly into the middle class. Moving back to the region after two years in the Midwest, I have been re-acquainted with my family while beginning teaching at a largely rural community college on the outskirts of the Charlotte metropolitan area. These changes make me question what it means that I am Appalachian and working class, despite, technically, not being either anymore, geographically or economically. Devoted to unraveling and examining my place in academia, family, the queer community, and a geographically liminal region between Appalachia and the South, exploring such issues in poetry and prose will not only illuminate my personal experience as an educator, but also begin conversations about what Appalachian heritage can do when thoughtfully and intentionally enacted in intersectional ways in a college classroom.
