Contribution short abstract:

The Appalachian region of the United States has been persistently stereotyped in dominant narratives. This paper gives examples of how multiple ways of knowing have been drawn on to craft counterstories that portray Appalachia’s diverse identities and perspectives and intense global connections.

Contribution long abstract:

The Appalachian region of the United States has been persistently stereotyped by successive generations in dominant national narratives through music; cartoons; movies; novels; journalism; historical, spatial and demographic mis/representations; and government discourses. This presentation will review the work that such stereotyping does culturally and ways that residents have drawn on multiple ways of knowing and sensing to contest those representations and forge new ones. One example will be a project in which the author (an anthropologist) has collaborated with a geologist, sociologist, historian and community members to document a waterscape in Appalachia through Traditional Ecological Knowledge, oral history and geoscientific research to consider what we can learn from a river about adapting to climate change. Other examples – drawn from the work of many in the region - will include countering stereotypes of Appalachia through uncloaking what they attempt to render invisible or silence: the intense global connections and diverse identities and perspectives in Appalachia. These counterstories are being communicated through foodways, visual art, poetry, memoirs, mapping, and outlawed stories and histories (as the Kentucky legislature is poised, for example, to pass legislation forbidding discussion of diversity, equity and inclusion in state universities). A forward focus of this project – following the sustainability tenet of reuse – is to collect existing resources on countering stereotypes of isolation and homogeneity of the Appalachian region for use in teaching, even if public education needs to seek broader community venues as this work is restricted in state schools.