Participation Type
Paper
Presentation #1 Title
Rural Heritages and Urban Futures: Competing Heritage Claims in Appalachian Migration to Cincinnati, OH
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
In the 1950s Appalachian migrants began to gain recognition in Midwestern cities like Cincinnati—as social problems, that is. The conditions of migration for many Appalachians were as rhetorical as they were material. Appalachians were often ridiculed in public discourse, treated as social problems to solve, and often ignored as a constituent group in deliberations about city policy. Despite the labor they provided, cities often lamented the arrival of rural Appalachians and stereotyped migrants as unfit for urban contexts
This paper examines these early contexts of Appalachian migration and compares them to another moment—the late 1970s and the formation of the Urban Appalachian Council in Cincinnati. In particular, this paper will analyze sociologist Roscoe Giffin’s popular 1954 Report of a Workshop on the Southern Mountaineer in Cincinnatiand compare its cultural rhetoric to that of early advocacy documents by Michael Maloney that were foundational to the “urban Appalachian” movement. Whereas Giffin’s report pathologizes connections “back home” as urban maladjustment and figured Appalachians as social problems, Maloney and others reworked a rhetoric of Appalachian culture that drew on heritage as a resource for rooting Appalachians as change agents within the city.
The presentation argues that heritage claims can be used by advocacy groups to reorient dismissive and oppressive discourses and rewrite traditional tensions such as “rural vs. urban.”This presentation will offer attendees historical and rhetorical context for early Appalachian outmigration and draw out useful rhetorical strategies advocacy organizations can use to mediate between rural heritages and urban futures.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
Dr. Jonathan L. Bradshaw is Assistant Professor of English at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, NC. His work on heritage claims and rhetorical circulation studies has appeared in Rhetoric Society Quarterly, Enculturation: A Journal of Rhetoric, Writing, and Culture, and Appalachian Journal.
Rural Heritages and Urban Futures: Competing Heritage Claims in Appalachian Migration to Cincinnati, OH
In the 1950s Appalachian migrants began to gain recognition in Midwestern cities like Cincinnati—as social problems, that is. The conditions of migration for many Appalachians were as rhetorical as they were material. Appalachians were often ridiculed in public discourse, treated as social problems to solve, and often ignored as a constituent group in deliberations about city policy. Despite the labor they provided, cities often lamented the arrival of rural Appalachians and stereotyped migrants as unfit for urban contexts
This paper examines these early contexts of Appalachian migration and compares them to another moment—the late 1970s and the formation of the Urban Appalachian Council in Cincinnati. In particular, this paper will analyze sociologist Roscoe Giffin’s popular 1954 Report of a Workshop on the Southern Mountaineer in Cincinnatiand compare its cultural rhetoric to that of early advocacy documents by Michael Maloney that were foundational to the “urban Appalachian” movement. Whereas Giffin’s report pathologizes connections “back home” as urban maladjustment and figured Appalachians as social problems, Maloney and others reworked a rhetoric of Appalachian culture that drew on heritage as a resource for rooting Appalachians as change agents within the city.
The presentation argues that heritage claims can be used by advocacy groups to reorient dismissive and oppressive discourses and rewrite traditional tensions such as “rural vs. urban.”This presentation will offer attendees historical and rhetorical context for early Appalachian outmigration and draw out useful rhetorical strategies advocacy organizations can use to mediate between rural heritages and urban futures.
