Participation Type
Panel
Session Title
Literature as Resistance
Session Abstract or Summary
Literature as Resistance is a panel comprised of UNC Asheville students who, if accepted, will present papers on Robert Gipe's Trampoline, Julia Franks' Over the Plain Houses, Crystal Wilkinson's Water Street, and Jim Wayne Miller's "Brier Sermon." These papers are the product of semester-long projects that explore the various ways in which literature can serve as a form of resistance, whether to environmental degradation, religious and industrial restrictions, patriarchal discourse, or stereotypes about Appalachia and its people. Each paper engages meaningfully with scholarship to present well-researched, insightful arguments. Students will benefit from sharing their work with a larger, interdisciplinary audience.
Presentation #1 Title
Dawn Jewell: The New Voice of Appalachia
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
In his debut novel Trampoline, Robert Gipe unearths many of his readers’ preconceived notions about female activism in present-day Appalachia and challenges them directly through the otherness of the protagonist, Dawn Jewell. A fifteen-year-old punk in Appalachian Kentucky family full of troublemakers, Dawn is an outcast among her social circles. She wears heavy, Gothic makeup, gets suspended from school regularly, and subsequently finds herself among a rambunctious group of lawless ruffians. However, Dawn has a side to her that invites reader empathy; with no shortage of teenage angst, she begins to protest against coal mining on the mountain situated just above her home. On this personal journey to save her homeland from destruction, Dawn becomes the new voice of Appalachia in that she gains much agency as the novel progresses; her involvement is wholly autonomous, making it all the more genuine and accessible to those who identify with her. Utilizing scholarship by Joyce Barry, Shannon Bell, Yvonne Braun, and Roger Cunningham, I analyze how Gipe uses a social outcast as the vital proprietor of activism in her community, interrogating how Gipe’s character development influences the novel’s reception in Appalachia and beyond.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Claire Boyer is a junior at UNC Asheville and will graduate in the spring of 2020 with a B.A in English and a minor in French. She aims to peruse a career in editing.
Presentation #2 Title
God in the Wilderness: How Nature Drives Religious Questioning in Julia Franks’s Over the Plain Houses
Presentation #2 Abstract or Summary
Julia Franks, in her 2016 novel Over the Plain Houses, posits major questions regarding the role of religion and economics in Appalachia, specifically how those two elements are intrinsically tied when applied to gender and environment. Set in the 1930s in the mountains of North Carolina, Franks challenges our conceptions of religion and industry in Appalachia as seen through the deteriorating marriage of Irenie and Brodis Lambey. Franks takes advantage of the intertextuality of religion to both establish and dismantle social, interpersonal, and interior psychological barriers as well as to openly question the structural imbalance and the personal costs attached to religion, particularly along a gendered divide. The work of scholars Thomas C. Foster, Jill Fraley, and Melanie Sovine Reid are brought into conversation with Franks’ text to provide a basis for understanding the historical applications of religion in studies of the Appalachian region as well as broad literary interpretation of several key motifs in the text. These scholars provide the scaffolding to which Over the Plain Houses directly converses with and, at times, refutes. What results is an honest, unflinching discourse about the costs—both economic and intangible—of religious and industrial abuse.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #2
Sara Williams is a junior at UNC Asheville who will graduate in December 2019 with a B.A. in Literature. They are a member of the University’s Honors Program as well as the Sigma Tau Delta English Honors Program and was a recipient of the Merritt Moseley Award from UNC Asheville’s. Currently working as a research assistant to the Professorship of the Mountain South, Sara is invested in analyzing the social and political forces at work in both Appalachia and the South at large and plans to pursue an M.A. and PhD in literary studies
Presentation #3 Title
Putting Black Women First: Crystal Wilkinson’s Modern Appalachia Vision in Water Street
Presentation #3 Abstract or Summary
Water Street flips the myths of fictional Appalachia on its head through Crystal Wilkinson’s use of inclusive language. The setting of Water Street is in Wilkinson’s Appalachia, an Appalachia of color, where black female voices are the center of their stories. In this modern showing of what Appalachia is, the application of diversity and the expressions of physical intimacy show a truth, a slice of life, previously ignored by the popular vision of a backwards backwoods Appalachia. The narrative intermingles seamlessly with the setting of Water Street, the name of her novel, which is placed in Kentucky, but can fit anywhere in Appalachia. Wilkinson presents an Appalachia that has always existed and yet has rarely been documented, an Appalachia where women find community in other women and have direct agency over their own actions and stories. Yolanda and Jeanette focus on the physical intimacies of women in their lives, making the male characters in sex, secondary. In this, Wilkinson challenges the reader to de-center the coital imperative and the male sex-drive discourse.
This paper primarily analyzes the modern narratives of Wilkinson’s characters Yolanda and Jeanette, and how their experiences show not only how modern Appalachia is, but how voices like Wilkinson’s propel Appalachia forward. I bring Crystal Wilkinson’s novel into conversations with scholars Patricia Hill Collins, Danny Miller, Sharon Hatfield, Gurney Norman, and Nicola Gavey to express how intrinsic the Affrilachian experience is to a modern Appalachia, and how the current discourse around sexual expression needs to become modern, as is shown in Water Street.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #3
Zoe Bergmire-Sweat graduated from UNC-Asheville spring of 2018 with a B.A. in Literature, concentration in creative writing and a minor in women, gender, sexuality studies. She aims to become a librarian, while being a poet on the side. Currently, she is working part time while volunteering at the Chapel Hill Public Library.
Presentation #4 Title
Appalachian Double Consciousness in Jim Wayne Miller’s “Brier Sermon”
Presentation #4 Abstract or Summary
In this paper I will examine the ways in which Jim Wayne Miller’s poem “Brier Sermon” dramatizes and problematizes the historically and socially distorted stereotypes of Appalachia. These stereotypes have constructed significant and enduring tensions between the outsider perceptions and the reality of Appalachian identity and may be put in useful conversation with W.E.B. DuBois’s notion of “double consciousness,” even though the contextual origins of that term are not Appalachian in context. The speaker of the poem, the eponymous Brier, constructs a unique Appalachian double consciousness that confronts both the reality and stereotypes of the region while displaying a means by which the warring notions of a double identity can, and must, be reconciled to coexist. Miller’s use of the historically derogatory “Brier” as the speaker of his poem serves to reappropriate previously pejorative Appalachian associations and renders the Brier a powerful tool to overturn stereotypes and initiate an acknowledgement of the nuance and complexity of Appalachia and its cultural identity.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #4
Britt DiBartolo graduated magna sum laude from UNC Asheville in May 2018 with a B.A. in Literature and a minor in Philosophy. She is currently applying to graduate schools where she hopes to continue her study of Appalachian and Southern literature.
Dawn Jewell: The New Voice of Appalachia
In his debut novel Trampoline, Robert Gipe unearths many of his readers’ preconceived notions about female activism in present-day Appalachia and challenges them directly through the otherness of the protagonist, Dawn Jewell. A fifteen-year-old punk in Appalachian Kentucky family full of troublemakers, Dawn is an outcast among her social circles. She wears heavy, Gothic makeup, gets suspended from school regularly, and subsequently finds herself among a rambunctious group of lawless ruffians. However, Dawn has a side to her that invites reader empathy; with no shortage of teenage angst, she begins to protest against coal mining on the mountain situated just above her home. On this personal journey to save her homeland from destruction, Dawn becomes the new voice of Appalachia in that she gains much agency as the novel progresses; her involvement is wholly autonomous, making it all the more genuine and accessible to those who identify with her. Utilizing scholarship by Joyce Barry, Shannon Bell, Yvonne Braun, and Roger Cunningham, I analyze how Gipe uses a social outcast as the vital proprietor of activism in her community, interrogating how Gipe’s character development influences the novel’s reception in Appalachia and beyond.
