Participation Type
Panel
Session Title
Eco-Centered Modes and Frameworks of Appalachian Literature
Session Abstract or Summary
This session will examine the connections between pastoral, post-pastoral, and georgic modes in regard to Appalachian literature. The role of religion in these modes, specifically the concept of Christian Ecocriticism, will also be considered in order for the audience to have a broader as well as more in-depth understanding of the styles in which a range of Appalachian literature was and still is created. The philosophies discussed are based on writing and interpretations from Virgil’s Georgics, Anthony Low’s A Georgic Revolution, Terry Gifford’s Reconnecting with John Muir: Essays in Post-Pastoral Practice, Greg Garrard’s Ecocriticism, and scholarship by Scott Hess, Joshua Mabie, and James Higgins. Appalachian authors Horace Kephart, Wilma Dykeman, Annie Dillard, Ian Marshall, Thomas Rain Crowe, Jim Minick, among others will be discussed. By understanding how these authors and their works function within a variety of, and are informed by, these frameworks, one is able to better understand the texts and the scholarship that’s been conducted on them.
Presentation #1 Title
Raven, Woman, Man: A/Religious Ecocritical Reading of Jim Minick’s Fire Is Your Water
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
In his debut novel, Fire Is Your Water, set in mid-1950s Appalachian Pennsylvania, Jim Minick introduces readers to a centuries-old healing tradition known as brauche in the Pennsylvania Dutch dialect, or powwowing in its English form. The novel incorporates many signature characteristics of a Christian ecocriticism, whereby tenets of the religion, such as human stewardship of creation, merge with an ecocritical valuing of, for example, the intrinsic good of that creation, independent of humans. Quite purposefully, Minick eschews traditional Western dualisms, including spirit/body, religion/nature, and human/nonhuman, further aligning his work with progressive Christian ecocritical thought, traditional Eastern religions, and Native American spiritual beliefs. Minick’s work centers on three main characters whose lives intertwine in various ways, with fire serving as a binding force. Cicero, a sassy-talking raven, speaks directly to readers, a first-bird point of view as it were. Ada Franklin, a devout Christian, possesses, but then loses, healing powwowing abilities. Lastly, Will Burk, whom both Cicero and Ada love, completes the trio and serves as religious foil.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Theresa L. Burriss serves as the Chair of Appalachian Studies and Director of the Appalachian Regional & Rural Studies Center at Radford University where she teaches undergraduate and graduate multidisciplinary classes on Appalachia. Theresa has published literary criticism on the Affrilachian Writers, including chapters in An American Vein: Critical Readings in Appalachian Literature (Ohio UP 2005) and Appalachia in the Classroom: Teaching the Region (Ohio UP 2013), for which she served as co-editor with Patricia Gantt.
Presentation #2 Title
Mountain Georgics: Everyday Nature in Appalachian Literature
Presentation #2 Abstract or Summary
“Mountain Georgics” combines three disparate literary elements: Appalachian literature, ecocriticism, and the georgic literary tradition. Such “stitching,” I argue, underscores the close affinity between Appalachian literature and an ecocriticism that looks beyond “wild” and pastoral nature and focuses instead on our home ground. In particular, I argue that much Appalachian literature belongs to the georgic literary tradition—a category of texts that values a local perspective and celebrates the knowledge gleaned from years (if not generations) of working and inhabiting the land. Indeed, the word georgic translates to “earth worker,” and as one scholar explains, Virgil’s Georgics “is preeminently about the value of hard and incessant labor” (Low 4). Because Appalachian authors persistently present the mountains as a space for work—for farming, for logging, and for mining—I argue that the hard but beautiful realities of Appalachian life invite an ecocritical approach that carries out Scott Hess’s directive to pay more attention to “everyday nature” and the “literature of home, work, and community” (90).
With glances at canonical Appalachian texts, I will demonstrate the prevalence of four hallmarks of georgic literature: 1) the importance of a sense of place; 2) the treatment of environmental degradation as an unfortunate reality; 3) the centrality of labor, especially food production; and 4) the tendency for that labor to unearth the past and to prompt, as a result, marvel.
Bibliography
Hess, Scott. “Imagining an Everyday Nature.” Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 17.1 (2010): 85-112.
Low, Anthony. The Georgic Revolution. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1985.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #2
Ethan Mannon is an ecocritic and Assistant Professor of English at Mars Hill University where he teaches American and Appalachian Literature, as well as composition, and coordinates the Regional Studies Program.
Presentation #3 Title
Reconnecting Ridges and Residents: The Pastoral, Anti-Pastoral, and Post-Pastoral in Appalachian Letters
Presentation #3 Abstract or Summary
Appalachia is often portrayed as either an idyllic terrain offering a retreat from the chaos of modern life or as a degraded, wretched space full of demoralized people. While these pastoral and anti-pastoral narratives have often been employed to encourage economic aid and social uplift in the region, they also have negative ramifications for the way we understand the Appalachian landscape and Appalachian people. Ecocritic Terry Gifford, in Reconnecting with John Muir: Essays in Post-Pastoral Practice, offers a nuanced understanding of landscapes and cultures in his description of the post-pastoral, "a cultural practice that seeks to reconnect our species and its home," the "search for a relationship that serves both culture and nature" (14). This paper explores the ways in which the pastoral, anti-pastoral, and post-pastoral function in the writings of Horace Kephart, Wilma Dykeman, Annie Dillard, Ian Marshall, and Thomas Rain Crowe, among others, to illustrate the ways in which Appalachian letters can connect and reconnect the region's ridges and its residents—arriving at depictions of people and place that allow agency and encourage positive social change.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #3
Savannah Paige Murray is a PhD student in Rhetoric & Writing at Virginia Tech. Her research focuses on ecocriticism, nature writing, ecocomposition, environmental rhetorics, and oral histories. She is a graduate of Wofford College and Appalachian State University.
Raven, Woman, Man: A/Religious Ecocritical Reading of Jim Minick’s Fire Is Your Water
In his debut novel, Fire Is Your Water, set in mid-1950s Appalachian Pennsylvania, Jim Minick introduces readers to a centuries-old healing tradition known as brauche in the Pennsylvania Dutch dialect, or powwowing in its English form. The novel incorporates many signature characteristics of a Christian ecocriticism, whereby tenets of the religion, such as human stewardship of creation, merge with an ecocritical valuing of, for example, the intrinsic good of that creation, independent of humans. Quite purposefully, Minick eschews traditional Western dualisms, including spirit/body, religion/nature, and human/nonhuman, further aligning his work with progressive Christian ecocritical thought, traditional Eastern religions, and Native American spiritual beliefs. Minick’s work centers on three main characters whose lives intertwine in various ways, with fire serving as a binding force. Cicero, a sassy-talking raven, speaks directly to readers, a first-bird point of view as it were. Ada Franklin, a devout Christian, possesses, but then loses, healing powwowing abilities. Lastly, Will Burk, whom both Cicero and Ada love, completes the trio and serves as religious foil.
