Participation Type
Panel
Session Title
Representing Regions: New Works
Session Abstract or Summary
Regional representation has been a contentious topic since Appalachia was named as a region and described, photographed, or otherwise advertised. Who tells the stories of a place, and for what reasons? This panel brings together the curator of a contemporary collection of photographs of Appalachia, a scholar of show caves as Appalachian cultural sites, and a critic of films depicting Appalachia. Each paper on this panel explores the contemporary need to see Appalachia in a particular way, and explodes the idea of Appalachian culture as ever containable through a single lens. Roger May, Douglas Reichert Powell, and Meredith McCarroll will each ask questions about the stakes of representation of Appalachia in the contemporary moment.
Presentation #1 Title
Complicating the Narrative: Contemporary Appalachian photography as a visual counterpoint
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
Appalachia has long been portrayed as a destitute place in need of sympathy, pity, and aid on one hand. On the other, a wild, untamable region filled with backwoodsmen and granny witches who shoot first and ask questions later. At the least, the visual construct of Appalachia has made a convenient comparative to gauge one’s own circumstance and lot in life. At least my children don’t look like that. At least my home doesn’t look that bad. At least we don’t talk like that. And so on.
It stands to reason that if visuals can be used to construct stereotypes, certainly they can be used to deconstruct those same stereotypes and at the very least, complicate the narrative of Appalachia being all poor, all white, and all rural.
Contemporary Appalachian photography as showcased in the Looking at Appalachia project, offers a different perspective on the region, a timelier examination to counter what we have historically been shown, and stands as open invitation to photographers of all skill levels to contribute to the greater visual conversation about place. The project is a democratic approach to photographing the region, is open to anyone, and has four simple guidelines: 1) the work must be made in the ARC defined region, 2) must be the original work of the photographer, 3) must be made in the current calendar year, and 4) must be submitted by midnight, December 31 of the current calendar year.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Roger May is an Appalachian American photographer and writer based in Charleston, West Virginia. His work and interviews have been published by the New York Times, the Guardian, the Atlantic, and others. In 2014, he started the crowdsourced Looking at Appalachia project.
Presentation #2 Title
Valley of the Badasses: Appalachian show caves in a landscape of conflict and change
Presentation #2 Abstract or Summary
One neglected contribution Appalachia has made to culture is as a site of contemporary cave art. In the eastern mountains, three dozen “show caves”—caverns prepared with lights, pathways, guided tours, and gift shops—can be found in the limestone of the valley floor between Fort Payne, Ala. and the Pennsylvania line. Show caves are a phenomenon whose real value—beyond the chintzy first impressions—lies in its ability to offer us an intense and yet convivial state of uncertainty about how the world works and how we work with it.
This presentation, drawn from my book Endless Caverns: An Underground Journey to the Show Caves of Appalachia (UNCP, 2018), surveys the chain of show caves in eastern West Virginia and southwest Virginia, where coal and gas and timber extraction jostle against prisons and golf courses and mineral springs and extreme sports. Traveling where Valley limestone collides with coal-country shale, I explore what’s at stake in understanding what the show cave represents: where almost all contemporary development strategies, whether recreational or residential or resource-extractive, bring the landscape under the principle of a single use, show caves are humbly but gloriously uncertain about some pretty basic issues, like are you indoors or outdoors? They’re rare spaces that tell us it’s ok not to know, and it can be a matter of survival to recognize when we don’t.
Appalachia’s most destructive follies are driven by an excess of certainty. Show caves enshrine a friendly, shared experience of contradiction and incommensurability. Maybe the whole country could use more of that: spaces for confronting the vagaries of existence, shoulder to shoulder with a random group of strangers, where your beliefs are challenged and yet you enjoy it.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #2
Douglas Reichert Powell is an associate professor of writing, literature, and cultural studies at Columbia College Chicago, and the author of Critical Regionalism: Connecting Politics and Culture in the American Landscape (UNCP, 2007).
Presentation #3 Title
Unwhite: Apppalachia, Race, and Film
Presentation #3 Abstract or Summary
Appalachia resides in the American imagination at the intersections of race and class. There is a deep historical investment in seeing the region as “pure white stock” and as deeply impoverished and backward. This project asks its audience to question what is at stake in simplistic and demeaning representations of a diverse population and region. It asks readers to understand the ways that Hollywood films and television shows other Appalachia in both romanticizing and demonizing ways. To keep believing stories like these, which give the government permission to look away and step back, a powerful cultural image is constructed, distributed, and consumed across popular culture. Drawing from critical race theory, cinema studies and Appalachian studies, this work asserts that Appalachian folks are positioned as both phenotypically white and representationally familiar as linked to non-white tropes long used in film. With an emphasis on the ways that documentary film from the region can reverse and challenge the tired stories being told about the region, McCarroll explores the pivotal position of Appalachians in the contemporary moment.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #3
Meredith McCarroll was born and raised in Western North Carolina, and earned her PhD from University of Tennessee. She writes and teaches about representation, race, and region in fiction and film. Her first book is Unwhite: Appalachia, Race, and Film (2018, Georgia). Along with Anthony Harkins, she co-edited Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy (2019, West Virginia). s
Complicating the Narrative: Contemporary Appalachian photography as a visual counterpoint
Appalachia has long been portrayed as a destitute place in need of sympathy, pity, and aid on one hand. On the other, a wild, untamable region filled with backwoodsmen and granny witches who shoot first and ask questions later. At the least, the visual construct of Appalachia has made a convenient comparative to gauge one’s own circumstance and lot in life. At least my children don’t look like that. At least my home doesn’t look that bad. At least we don’t talk like that. And so on.
It stands to reason that if visuals can be used to construct stereotypes, certainly they can be used to deconstruct those same stereotypes and at the very least, complicate the narrative of Appalachia being all poor, all white, and all rural.
Contemporary Appalachian photography as showcased in the Looking at Appalachia project, offers a different perspective on the region, a timelier examination to counter what we have historically been shown, and stands as open invitation to photographers of all skill levels to contribute to the greater visual conversation about place. The project is a democratic approach to photographing the region, is open to anyone, and has four simple guidelines: 1) the work must be made in the ARC defined region, 2) must be the original work of the photographer, 3) must be made in the current calendar year, and 4) must be submitted by midnight, December 31 of the current calendar year.
