108-622: Maggie Anderson (born September 23, 1948) is an American poet and editor with roots in Appalachia . Anderson attended West Virginia Wesleyan College from 1966–68 and earned a bachelor's degree in English, with high honors, from West Virginia University in 1970. Her M.A. in English ( Creative Writing ) in 1973 and an M.S.W. in 1977 were also from WVU. She worked as a rehabilitation counselor for blind and visually impaired clients at
216-688: A Fulbright Full Scholarship . She has been commissioned by the Fromm Foundation , the National Endowment for the Arts and the Library of Congress , among other organizations. LeBaron was a professor at California Institute of the Arts , where she held the Roy E. Disney Family Chair from 2013 until 2015. In 2024, she retired from teaching and was appointed professor emerita . LeBaron
324-538: A Juilliard-trained pianist and wrote songs on an acoustic guitar, setting her poetry to music. Her grandmother taught her to play chess, and at 12 LeBaron won a University of Alabama chess competition. She later said that chess taught her stamina and concentration, "but above all that you can always find a better move if you look long enough." LeBaron attended the University of Alabama , intending to study piano. She shifted her emphasis to harp after coming across
432-430: A long hunter and surveyor instrumental in the early settlement of Kentucky and Tennessee. Like Boone, Appalachian pioneers moved into areas largely separated from "civilization" by high mountain ridges and had to fend for themselves against the elements. As many of these early settlers were living on Native American lands, attacks from Native American tribes were a continuous threat until the 19th century. As early as
540-574: A paramount chiefdom centered around a village complex in northern Georgia. By the time English explorers arrived in Appalachia in the late 17th century, the central part of the region was controlled by Algonquian tribes (namely the Shawnee ), and the southern part of the region was controlled by the Cherokee . The French based in modern-day Quebec also made inroads into the northern areas of
648-608: A "core" Appalachian region consisting of 164 counties in West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Georgia, and a greater region defined by the ARC. In the Encyclopedia of Appalachia (2006), Appalachian State University historian Howard Dorgan suggests the term " Old Appalachia " for the region's cultural boundaries, noting an academic tendency to ignore the southwestern and northeastern extremes of
756-1150: A Distinguished Scholar Award. In 2003, she received the Helen and Laura Kraut Memorial Ohioana Poetry Award from the Ohioana Library Association. In 2002, the KSU Alumni Association awarded her one of just three University Distinguished Teaching Awards. More than 40 of Anderson’s poems have been published in poetry journals, including The American Poetry Review , New Letters , Prairie Schooner , The Georgia Review , and Hamilton Stone Review , and her work has appeared in more than 50 anthologies and textbooks . Essays have appeared in 17 anthologies and journals of contemporary poetry and poetics. Her poems have been set to music four times by contemporary composers, including "The Dream Vegetables" in Dreams and Nocturnes : Chamber Music of Stephen Gryc , "In Singing Weather" by Monica Houghton, "Nightmare" by Anne LeBaron , and "Related to
864-1082: A distrust of religious hierarchies , both rooted in the evangelical tendencies of the region's pioneers, many of whom had been influenced by the Holiness movement and " New Light " movement in England. Many of the denominations brought from Europe underwent modifications or factioning during the Second Great Awakening (especially the Holiness movement) in the early 19th century. Several 18th and 19th-century religious traditions are still practiced in parts of Appalachia, including natural water (or "creek") baptism , rhythmically chanted preaching, congregational shouting, snake handling , and foot washing . While most church-goers in Appalachia attend fairly well-organized churches affiliated with regional or national bodies, small unaffiliated congregations are not uncommon in rural mountain areas. Protestantism
972-629: A majority of southern Appalachians still supported the Union. Though with opposition by Southern Unionist , middle and southern Appalachia became components of the Confederacy . In 1861, a Minnesota newspaper identified 161 counties in southern Appalachia—which the paper called "Alleghenia"—where Union support remained strong, and which might provide crucial support for the defeat of the Confederacy. However, many of these Unionists—especially in
1080-539: A movement among conservationists to preserve what remained and allow the land to "heal". In 1911, Congress passed the Weeks Act , giving the federal government authority to create national forests east of the Mississippi River and control timber harvesting. Regional writers and business interests led a movement to create national parks in the eastern United States similar to Yosemite and Yellowstone in
1188-660: A poetry journal, with Winston Fuller and Irene McKinney , and served as editor until 1981. Anderson’s awards and honors include two fellowships in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts and grants from the Ohio Arts Council and the MacDowell Colony , including an Isabella Gardner Fellowship. In 2004, Emory and Henry College in Virginia honored her at their 23rd annual Appalachian Literary Festival, and Kent State University honored her with
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#17327880637651296-566: A resurgence in popularity across the country during the American folk music revival of the 1960s, when musicologists such as Mike Seeger , John Cohen , and Ralph Rinzler traveled to remote parts of the region in search of musicians who they thought were unaffected by modern music. Today, dozens of annual music festivals held throughout the region preserve the Appalachian music tradition. Early Appalachian literature typically centered on
1404-404: A series of monodramas for female voice and chamber musicians: Pope Joan (2000), Transfiguration (2003), Sucktion (2008), and Some Things Should Not Move (2013). LeBaron's operas The E & O Line , Croak (The Last Frog) (1996), and Wet (2005) were all collaborative works that led her to develop the genre she terms "hyperopera": "an opera resulting from intensive collaboration across all
1512-880: A setting of Gertrude Stein texts for soprano and chamber ensemble. Among her multicultural compositions are Lamentation/Invocation (1984) for baritone and three instruments, using Korean-derived gestures and long sustained tones for the voice; Noh Reflections (1985) for string trio, which draws upon the music of Japanese Noh theater; Breathtails (2012) for baritone, string quartet, and Japanese shakuhachi ; and her large-scale celebration of Kazakhstan , The Silent Steppe Cantata (2011) for tenor Timur Bekbosunov, women's chorus, and an orchestra of traditional Kazakh instruments, premiered at Congress Hall in Astana . Writing about LeBaron's 1989 Telluris Theoria Sacra (for flute/piccolo, clarinet/bass clarinet, violin, viola, cello, percussion, and piano), musicologist Susan McClary notes that
1620-496: A significant role in developing the instrumental aspects of Appalachian music, most notably with the introduction of the five-stringed banjo —one of the region's iconic symbols—in the late 18th century. Another instrument known in Appalachian culture was the Appalachian dulcimer which, practically, is a guitar-shaped instrument laid on its side with a flat bottom and the strings plucked in a manner to make alternating notes. In
1728-593: A small percentage of the region's present population, their most notable concentration being the reservation of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in North Carolina. The Melungeons , a group of mixed African, European, and Native American ancestry, are scattered across northeastern Tennessee, eastern Kentucky, and southwestern Virginia. According to the American Factfinder 's 2013 data,
1836-466: A village of indigenous peoples near present-day Tallahassee, Florida , whose name they transcribed as Apalchen or Apalachen ( IPA: [aˈpal(a)tʃen] ). The name was altered by the Spanish to Apalache ( Apalachee ) and used as a name for the tribe and region spreading well inland to the north. Pánfilo de Narváez 's expedition first entered Apalachee territory on June 15, 1528, and applied
1944-552: A wide range of media and styles. Frequently combining tonal and atonal techniques, she has utilized elements of blues, jazz, pop, rock, and folk music in such scores as the opera The E & O Line (1993), American Icons (1996) for orchestra, and Traces of Mississippi (2000) for chorus, orchestra, poet narrators, and rap artists. She has also used American literary sources with Devil in the Belfry (1993) for violin and piano, inspired by Edgar Allan Poe , and Is Money Money (2000),
2052-569: Is a dialect of Midland American English known as the Southern Midland dialect and is spoken primarily in central and southern Appalachia. The Northern Midland dialect is spoken in the northern parts of the region, while Pittsburgh English (more commonly known as "Pittsburghese") is strongly influenced by the Appalachian dialect. The Southern Appalachian dialect is considered part of the Southern American dialect , although
2160-436: Is an American composer, harpist, academic, and writer. Frequently combining tonal and atonal techniques with an experimental approach, LeBaron's compositions utilize elements of blues, jazz, pop, rock, and folk music. She explores environmental, cultural, philosophical and cultural themes, incorporating theater, mixed media, literature, and humor. She employs a wide array of electronic enhancements and extended techniques for
2268-561: Is captured in works such as Olive Tilford Dargan 's Call Home to the Heart (1932), Agnes Sligh Turnbull 's The Rolling Years (1936), James Still 's The River of Earth (1940), Harriette Simpson Arnow 's The Dollmaker (1954), and Harry Caudill 's Night Comes to the Cumberlands (1962). In the 1970s and 1980s, the rise of authors like Breece D'J Pancake , Dorothy Allison , and Lisa Alther brought greater literary diversity to
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#17327880637652376-726: Is now Appalachia over 16,000 years ago. The earliest discovered site is the Meadowcroft Rockshelter in Washington County, Pennsylvania , which some scientists claim is pre- Clovis culture . Several other Archaic period (8000–1000 BC) archaeological sites have been identified in the region, such as the St. Albans site in West Virginia and the Icehouse Bottom site in Tennessee. The presence of Africans in
2484-735: Is now Kentucky took part in George Rogers Clark 's Illinois campaign . Two years later, a group of Appalachian frontiersmen known as the Overmountain Men routed British forces at the Battle of Kings Mountain after rejecting a call by the British to disarm. After the war, residents throughout the Appalachian backcountry—especially the Monongahela region in western Pennsylvania and antebellum northwestern Virginia (now
2592-490: Is pronounced /æpəˈleɪtʃ(i)ə/ , also /æpəˈleɪʃ(i)ə/ , all with a third syllable like "lay". The use of northern pronunciations is controversial to some in the southern region. Despite not being in Appalachia, Appalachian Trail organizations in New England popularized the occasional use of the "sh" sound for the "ch" in northern dialects in the early 20th century. Native American hunter-gatherers first arrived in what
2700-568: Is the largest city by population to be sometimes considered within the Appalachian region. As defined by the 2020 census , the following metropolitan statistical areas and micropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) are sometimes included as part of Appalachia: An estimated 90% of Appalachia's earliest European settlers originated from the Anglo-Scottish border country—namely the English counties of Cumberland , Westmorland , Northumberland, County Durham , Lancashire and Yorkshire , and
2808-506: Is the most dominant denomination in Appalachia, although there is a significant Roman Catholic presence in the northern half of the region and urban areas, such as Pittsburgh and Scranton. The region's early Lowland and Ulster Scot immigrants brought Presbyterianism to Appalachia, eventually organizing into bodies such as the Cumberland Presbyterian Church . English Baptists —most of whom had been influenced by
2916-450: The / æ p ə ˈ l æ tʃ ən z / , and the cultural region of Appalachia is pronounced /ˈæpəˈlætʃ(i)ə/ , both with a third syllable like the "la" in "latch". This pronunciation is favored in the "core" region in the central and southern parts of the Appalachian range. In northern U.S. dialects, the mountains are pronounced / æ p ə ˈ l eɪ tʃ ən z / or / æ p ə ˈ l eɪ ʃ ən z / . The cultural region of Appalachia
3024-549: The Appalachian Mountains of the eastern United States. In the north, its boundaries stretch from the western Catskill Mountains of New York, continuing south through the Blue Ridge Mountains and Great Smoky Mountains into northern Georgia , Alabama , and Mississippi , with West Virginia near the center, being the only state entirely within the boundaries of Appalachia. In 2021, the region
3132-587: The Appalachian Regional Commission was created to further alleviate poverty in the region, mainly by diversifying the region's economy and helping to provide better health care and educational opportunities to the region's inhabitants. By 1990, Appalachia had largely joined the economic mainstream but still lagged behind the rest of the nation in most economic indicators. Since Appalachia lacks definite physiographical or topographical boundaries, there has been some disagreement over what
3240-606: The Civil War . While there were two major theaters of operation in the region—namely the Shenandoah Valley and the Chattanooga area—much of the violence was caused by bushwhackers and guerrilla warfare . The northernmost battles of the war were fought in Appalachia with the Battle of Buffington Island and the Battle of Salineville resulting from Morgan's Raid . Large numbers of livestock were killed (grazing
3348-492: The French and Indian War in 1763 lured settlers deeper into the mountains, namely to upper east Tennessee , northwestern North Carolina, upstate South Carolina , and central Kentucky. During the 18th century, enslaved Africans were brought to Appalachia by European settlers of trans-Appalachia Kentucky and the upper Blue Ridge Valley. According to the first census of 1790, more than 3,000 enslaved Africans were transported across
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3456-571: The Manhattan Project and advancements in supercomputing and nuclear power . By the 1950s, poor farming techniques and the loss of jobs to mechanization in the mining industry had left much of central and southern Appalachia poverty-stricken. The lack of jobs also led to widespread difficulties with outmigration. Beginning in the 1930s, federal agencies such as the Tennessee Valley Authority began investing in
3564-703: The Separate Baptist and Regular Baptist movements—were also common on the Appalachian frontier, and today are represented in the region by groups such as the Free Will Baptists , the Southern Baptists , Missionary Baptists , and "old-time" groups such as the United Baptists and Primitive Baptists . Circuit riders such as Francis Asbury helped spread Methodism to Appalachia in the early 19th century, and today 9.2% of
3672-687: The Upland South , following Protestant Scotch-Irish migrations to the southern and Midwestern United States in the 18th and 19th centuries. The Upland South region includes the Ozark Plateau in Missouri , Arkansas , and Oklahoma , an area which is not included in the ARC definition. While exploring inland along the northern coast of Florida in 1528, the members of the Narváez expedition , including Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca , found
3780-437: The yeoman farmers of Appalachia and their wealthier lowland counterparts continued to grow, especially as the latter dominated most state legislatures. People in Appalachia began to feel slighted over what they considered unfair taxation methods and lack of state funding for improvements (especially for roads). In the northern half of the region, the lowland elites consisted largely of industrial and business interests, whereas in
3888-571: The 1860s and native novelists such as Mary Noailles Murfree . Works such as Rebecca Harding Davis 's Life in the Iron Mills (1861), Emma Bell Miles ' The Spirit of the Mountains (1905), Catherine Marshall's Christy (1912), Horace Kephart 's Our Southern Highlanders (1913) marked a shift in the region's literature from local color to realism. The transition from an agrarian society to an industrial society and its effects on Appalachia
3996-579: The 18th century, Appalachia (then known simply as the "backcountry") began to distinguish itself from its wealthier lowland and coastal neighbors to the east. Frontiersmen often argued with lowland and tidewater elites over taxes, sometimes to the point of armed revolts such as the Regulator Movement (1767–1771) in North Carolina. In 1778, at the height of the American Revolution , backwoodsmen from Pennsylvania, Virginia, and what
4104-515: The 1960s the region had failed to capitalize on any long-term benefits from these two industries. Beginning in the 1930s, the federal government sought to alleviate poverty in the Appalachian region with a series of New Deal initiatives, specifically the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). The TVA was responsible for the construction of hydroelectric dams that provide a vast amount of electricity and that support programs for better farming practices, regional planning, and economic development. In 1965,
4212-452: The 21st century. Since 2001, a number of the region's public schools were threatened with loss of funding due to difficulties fulfilling the demands of No Child Left Behind . Appalachian music is one of the best-known manifestations of Appalachian culture. Traditional Appalachian music (called old-time music ) is derived primarily from the English, Irish, and Scottish ballad and fiddle traditions. African-American blues musicians played
4320-553: The ARC's pragmatic definition. The term " Greater Appalachia " was introduced by American journalist Colin Woodard in his 2011 book, American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America . Sean Trende , senior elections analyst at RealClearPolitics , defines "Greater Appalachia" in his 2012 book The Lost Majority as including both the Appalachian Mountains region and
4428-593: The Appalachian Mountains dates back to the 16th century with the arrival of European colonists. Enslaved Africans were first brought to America during the 16th-century Spanish expeditions to the mountainous regions of the South. In 1526 enslaved Africans were brought to the Pee Dee River region of western North Carolina by Spanish explorer Lucas Vazquez de Ayllõn . Enslaved Africans also accompanied
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4536-509: The Appalachian region. Sociologists such as James Brown and Cratis Williams and authors such as Harry Caudill and Michael Harrington brought attention to the region's plight in the 1960s, prompting Congress to create the Appalachian Regional Commission in 1965. The commission's efforts helped to stem the tide of outmigration and diversify the region's economies. Although there have been drastic improvements in
4644-576: The Blue Mountains in North Carolina and Tennessee. Although Swedes and Finns formed only a tiny portion of the Appalachian settlers, it was Swedish and Finnish settlers of New Sweden who brought the northern European woodsman skills such as log cabin construction which formed the basis of backwoods Appalachian material culture. Germans were a major pioneer group to migrate to Appalachia, settling mainly in western Pennsylvania and southwest Virginia . Smaller numbers of Germans were also among
4752-562: The Carolinas filled up, immigrants began pushing further and further westward into the Appalachian Mountains. A relatively large proportion of the early backcountry immigrants were Ulster Scots —later known as " Scotch-Irish ", a group mostly originating from southern Scotland and northern England, many of whom had settled in Ulster Ireland prior to migrating to America —who were seeking cheaper land and freedom from prejudice as
4860-488: The Civil War, mandatory education laws and state assistance helped larger communities begin to establish grade schools and high schools. During the same period, many of the region's institutions of higher education were established or greatly expanded. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, service organizations such as Pi Beta Phi and various religious organizations established settlement schools and mission schools in
4968-1166: The Company of Women , Hazard Zones , Gloria , Running , Morgantown , Lyndon Johnson and the Majorettes , Looking Good ) Maurice Manning ( Bucolics , A Companion for Owls ), Anne Shelby ( Appalachian Studies , We Keep a Store ), George Ella Lyon ( Borrowed Children , Don't You Remember? ), Pamela Duncan ( Moon Women , The Big Beautiful ), David Joy ( Where All Light Tends to Go , The Weight of This World ), Chris Offutt ( No Heroes , The Good Brother ), Charles Frazier ( Cold Mountain , Thirteen Moons ), Sharyn McCrumb ( The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter ), Robert Morgan ( Gap Creek ), Jim Wayne Miller ( The Brier Poems ), Gurney Norman ( Divine Right's Trip , Kinfolks ), Ron Rash ( Serena ), Elizabeth Madox Roberts ( The Great Meadow , The Time of Man ), Thomas Wolfe ( Look Homeward Angel , You Can't Go Home Again ), Rachel Carson ( The Sea Around Us , Silent Spring ; Presidential Medal of Freedom ), and Jeannette Walls ( The Glass Castle ). Appalachian literature crosses with
5076-573: The Lowland Scottish counties of Ayrshire , Dumfriesshire, Roxburghshire , Berwickshire and Wigtownshire . Most of these were from families who had been resettled in the Ulster Plantation in northern Ireland in the 17th century, but some came directly from the Anglo-Scottish border region. In America, these people are often grouped under the single name " Scotch-Irish " or "Scots-Irish". Many of these Scots-Irish emigrated to
5184-721: The Scotch-Irish were looked down upon by other more powerful elements in society. Others included Germans from the Palatinate region and English settlers from the Anglo-Scottish border country. Between 1730 and 1763, immigrants trickled into western Pennsylvania , the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, and western Maryland . Thomas Walker's discovery of the Cumberland Gap in 1750 and the end of
5292-552: The Sky" from "Sun Songs and Nocturnes" by John David Earnest, an a cappella piece for male chorus performed at Lincoln Center in 1992 by Chanticleer and the New Jersey Philharmonic Orchestra. Appalachia Appalachia (locally / ˌ æ p ə ˈ l æ tʃ ə / , elsewhere also /- l eɪ tʃ ə , - l eɪ ʃ ə / ) is a geographic region located in the central and southern sections of
5400-484: The Southern Appalachia has a white majority, comprising 84% of the population. African Americans are 7% and Hispanics or Latinos are 6% of the population. Asians and Pacific Islanders are 1.5% of the population. The counties have great differences among themselves, in terms of racial and ethnic diversity. Christianity is the main religion in Appalachia, which is characterized by a sense of independence and
5508-411: The United States "Alleghania" or "Appalachia" in place of "America", since the latter name belonged to Latin America too. Edgar Allan Poe later took up the idea and considered Appalachia a much better name than America or Alleghania; he thought it better defined the United States as a distinct geographical entity, separate from the rest of the Americas, and he also thought it did honor to both Irving and
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#17327880637655616-421: The United States government into areas of science and technology were established in the mid-20th century, notably with NASA 's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, crucial with the design of Apollo program launch vehicles and propulsion of the Space Shuttle program , and at adjacent facilities Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee with
5724-420: The United States, Anderson has lived in Denmark (1992–1993) and traveled extensively throughout western and eastern Europe , Russia , and Scandinavia . In 1989, Anderson began teaching creative writing at Kent State University and was appointed coordinator of the Wick Poetry Program in 1992. In 2004, when the Wick Poetry Program celebrated its 20th anniversary and received a $ 2 million endowment to create
5832-464: The Wagnerian orchestra with smaller and more specialized forces of instruments and electronic sound for Crescent City , with musicians who move readily among stylistic genres, just as the vocalists do. The opera's theatrical action is refracted through a prism of video work, lighting effects, and performance freedoms and simultaneities. For its world premiere production in Los Angeles in 2012, Crescent City also engaged six visual artists to participate in
5940-479: The West Virginia Rehabilitation Center from 1973-77. Beginning in 1979, she worked as poet-in-residence for ten years, in schools, senior centers, correctional facilities and libraries in West Virginia , Ohio, and Pennsylvania. She has served as visiting writer at several universities, including the University of Pittsburgh , the University of Oregon , the Pennsylvania State University , Hamilton College, and West Virginia University. In addition to her travels in
6048-431: The Whig Party had disintegrated. Sentiments in northern Appalachia had shifted to the pro- abolitionist Republican Party . In southern Appalachia, abolitionists still constituted a radical minority, although several smaller opposition parties (most of which were both pro- Union and pro-slavery) were formed to oppose the planter-dominated Southern Democrats . As states in the southern United States moved toward secession ,
6156-420: The Wick Poetry Center in the College of Arts and Sciences, Anderson was named director. Anderson was on the founding committee of the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and served as Kent State University’s Campus Coordinator for the NEOMFA from 2003–2006 and as Director of the Northeast Ohio MFA Consortium from 2006-2009. Upon her retirement from KSU in 2009, the Maggie Anderson Endowment Fund
6264-427: The collaborative process by designing and building set pieces as various locales in the opera. Prior to the full production of Crescent City , LeBaron composed Phantasmagoriettas from Crescent City , performed by the LOOS Electro Acoustic Media Orchestra and the soloists from Los Angeles during the Dag in de Branding Festival in the Hague in 2007. As an improviser LeBaron employs a wide array of extended techniques for
6372-523: The commission was established, counties were added based on economic need, however, rather than any cultural parameters. The first major attempt to map Appalachia as a distinctive cultural region came in the 1890s with the efforts of Berea College president William Goodell Frost , whose "Appalachian America" included 194 counties in 8 states. In 1921, John C. Campbell published The Southern Highlander and His Homeland in which he modified Frost's map to include 254 counties in 9 states. A landmark survey of
6480-551: The disciplines essential for producing opera in the 21st century – in a word, a 'meta-collaborative' undertaking". With her hyperopera Crescent City (2012, libretto by Douglas Kearney ), LeBaron went a step beyond the nineteenth-century concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk (the united/total/universal artwork that synthesized architecture, scenic painting, singing, instrumental music, poetry, drama, and dance), championed by Richard Wagner . A more lateral, inclusive, and intensive collaboration of artists occurs with hyperopera, breaking down
6588-494: The end of Reconstruction . Pittsburgh as well as Knoxville grew into major industrial centers, especially regarding iron and steel production. By 1900, the Chattanooga area of north Georgia and northern Alabama had experienced similar changes with manufacturing booms in Atlanta and Birmingham at the edge of the Appalachian region. Railroad construction gave the greater nation access to the vast coalfields in central Appalachia, making its economy greatly dependent on coal mining. As
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#17327880637656696-419: The expeditions of Fernando de Soto in 1540 and Juan Pardo in 1566, who both traveled through Appalachia. The de Soto and Pardo expeditions explored the mountains of South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia, and encountered complex agrarian societies consisting of Muskogean-speaking inhabitants. De Soto indicated that much of the region west of the mountains was part of the domain of Coosa ,
6804-406: The feuds as the natural products of profound ignorance, poverty, and isolation, and perhaps even inbreeding . In reality, the leading participants were typically well-to-do local elites with networks of clients who, like the Northeast and Chicago political machines , fought for their power over local and regional politics. Logging firms' rapid devastation of the forests of the Appalachians sparked
6912-589: The habitats of native species and contributed significantly to the decline in agricultural land use in larger Appalachia. There are growing IT sectors in many parts of the region. Frontier , the fastest supercomputer in the world, is housed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. In the 21st century, Appalachia has swung heavily towards the Republican Party . Due to topographic considerations, several major cities are located near but not included in Appalachia. These include Cincinnati , Ohio, Cleveland , Ohio, Nashville, Tennessee , and Atlanta , Georgia. Pittsburgh
7020-828: The harp, including preparing the harp (similar to John Cage 's prepared piano) and bowing the strings, as well as a variety of electronic enhancements. Her development of a new performance vocabulary for the instrument began in the early 1970s, when she played in the Alabama improvising ensemble Trans Museq along with Davey Williams and LaDonna Smith . Her career as an improviser has included performance collaborations with such creative composer/musicians as Anthony Braxton , Muhal Richard Abrams , Evan Parker , George E. Lewis , Derek Bailey , Leroy Jenkins , Lionel Hampton , and Shelley Hirsch . LeBaron's double-CD 1, 2, 4, 3 (Innova 236, 2010) features collaborations with thirteen different musicians in solo, duo, quartet and trio configurations. LeBaron performs in Los Angeles and elsewhere with
7128-408: The harp, including preparing the harp and bowing the strings. Among other venues, LeBaron's work has been performed at Carnegie Hall , the Hollywood Bowl , and the Kennedy Center , by orchestras including the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the National Symphony Orchestra . She is the recipient of an Alpert Award in the Arts , a Toulmin grant from Opera America , a Guggenheim fellowship , and
7236-449: The initial wave of migrants to the southern mountains. The initial wave of Appalachian ethnography and anthropology in the first half of the 20th century disregarded this German culture, instead choosing to focus almost solely on the Scots-Irish component of Appalachian culture. This was likely due to Germanophobia caused by the two World Wars, and has since begun to be corrected. In the 19th century, Welsh immigrants were brought into
7344-464: The initiative failed after Tennessee's governor ordered the Confederate Army to occupy the region, forcing East Tennessee's Unionists to flee to the north or go into hiding. The one exception was the so-called Free and Independent State of Scott , though it was never recognized by either the Union or the Confederacy and thus would later be invaded by Confederates. Both central and southern Appalachia suffered tremendous violence and turmoil during
7452-427: The instrument in an empty music room. As an undergraduate, she studied classical harp technique with teachers including Alice Chalifoux at the Salzedo Harp Colony. She was a member of Raudelunas, a surrealist art collective. LeBaron received a BA in music at the University of Alabama and a master's degree at Stony Brook University , She was awarded a doctorate in musical arts from Columbia University , where she
7560-518: The larger genre of Southern literature . Internationally renowned writers such as William Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy have made notable contributions to the American canon with tales set within Appalachia. McCarthy's Suttree (1979) is an intense vision of the squalidness and brutality of life along the Tennessee River , in the heart of Appalachia. Other McCarthy novels set in Appalachia include The Orchard Keeper (1965), Outer Dark (1968), and Child of God (1973). Appalachia also serves as
7668-524: The mountain areas of North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama—were "conditional" Unionists in that they opposed secession but also opposed violence to prevent secession, and thus when their respective state legislatures voted to secede, some would either shift their support to the Confederacy, or flee the state. Kentucky sought to remain neutral at the outset of the conflict, opting not to supply troops to either side. After Virginia voted to secede, several mountain counties in northwestern Virginia rejected
7776-779: The mountains into East Tennessee and more than 12,000 into the Kentucky mountains. Between 1790 and 1840, a series of treaties with the Cherokee and other Native American tribes opened up lands in north Georgia , north Alabama , the Tennessee Valley , the Cumberland Plateau , and the Great Smoky Mountains . The last of these treaties culminated in the removal of the bulk of the Cherokee population (as well as Choctaw , Chickasaw and others) from
7884-490: The name. Now spelled "Appalachian", it is the fourth oldest surviving European place-name in the U.S. After the de Soto expedition in 1540, Spanish cartographers began to apply the name of the tribe to the Appalachian Mountain range. The first cartographic appearance of Apalchen is on Diego Gutiérrez 's 1562 map; the first use for the mountain range is the 1565 map by Jacques le Moyne de Morgues . Le Moyne
7992-547: The nationwide demand for lumber skyrocketed, lumber firms turned to the virgin forests of southern Appalachia, using sawmill and logging railroad innovations to reach remote timber stands. The Tri-Cities area of Tennessee and Virginia and the Kanawha Valley of West Virginia became major petrochemical production centers. The late 19th and early 20th centuries also saw the development of various regional stereotypes. Attempts by President Rutherford B. Hayes to enforce
8100-493: The natives after whom the Appalachian Mountains had been named. At the time, however, the United States had already reached far beyond the greater Appalachian region, but the "magnificence" of Appalachia Poe considered enough to rechristen the nation with a name that would be unique to its character. However, Poe's popular influence only grew decades after his death, and so the name was never seriously considered. By 1860,
8208-597: The north-central part of West Virginia)—refused to pay a tax placed on whiskey by the new American government, leading to what became known as the Whiskey Rebellion . The resulting tighter federal controls in the Monongahela valley resulted in many whiskey/bourbon makers migrating via the Ohio River to Kentucky and Tennessee where the industry could flourish. In the early 19th century, the rift between
8316-569: The observations of people from outside the region, such as Henry Timberlake 's Memoirs (1765) and Thomas Jefferson 's Notes on the State of Virginia (1784), although there are notable exceptions, including Davy Crockett 's A Narrative of the Life of Davy Crockett (1834). Travellers' accounts published in 19th-century magazines gave rise to Appalachian local color , which reached its height with George Washington Harris 's Sut Lovingood character of
8424-662: The ordinance and with the help of the Union Army established a separate state, admitted to the Union as West Virginia in 1863. However, half the counties included in the new state, comprising two-thirds of its territory, were secessionist and pro-Confederate. This caused great difficulty for the Unionist state government in Wheeling , both during and after the war. A similar effort occurred in East Tennessee. Still,
8532-584: The origin point for the kid, the protagonist of McCarthy's Western masterpiece Blood Meridian . Faulkner's hometown of Oxford, Mississippi , is on the borderlands of what is considered Appalachia, but his fictional Yoknapatawpha should be considered part of the region. Almost all of the fiction which earned him the Nobel Prize is set there, including Light in August and Absalom, Absalom . Anne LeBaron Alice Anne LeBaron (born May 30, 1953)
8640-506: The parts of the region south of the Mason–Dixon line , the lowland elites consisted of large-scale land-owning planters . The Whig Party , formed in the 1830s, drew widespread support from disaffected Appalachians. Tensions between the mountain counties and state governments sometimes reached the point of mountain counties threatening to break off and form separate states. In 1832, bickering between western Virginia and eastern Virginia over
8748-1318: The region encompasses. The most commonly used modern definition of Appalachia is the one initially defined by the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) in 1965 and expanded over subsequent decades. The region defined by the commission currently includes 420 counties and eight independent cities in 13 states, including all 55 counties in West Virginia , 14 counties in New York, 52 in Pennsylvania , 32 in Ohio , 3 in Maryland , 54 in Kentucky , 25 counties and 8 cities in Virginia , 29 in North Carolina , 52 in Tennessee , 6 in South Carolina , 37 in Georgia , 37 in Alabama , and 24 in Mississippi . When
8856-542: The region for their mining and metallurgical expertise, and by 1900 over 100,000 Welsh immigrants were living in western Pennsylvania alone. Thousands of German-speaking Swiss migrated to Appalachia in the second half of the 19th century, and their descendants remain in places such as East Bernstadt, Kentucky , and Gruetli-Laager, Tennessee . The coal mining and manufacturing boom in the late 19th and early 20th centuries brought large numbers of Italians and Eastern Europeans to Appalachia, although most of these families left
8964-589: The region in modern-day New York state and Pennsylvania. By the mid-18th century the French had outposts such as Fort Duquesne and Fort Le Boeuf controlling the access points of the Allegheny River and upper Ohio River valleys after exploration by Celeron de Bienville . European migration into Appalachia began in the 18th century. As lands in eastern Pennsylvania, the Tidewater region of Virginia and
9072-625: The region in the following decade by the United States Department of Agriculture defined the region as consisting of 206 counties in 6 states. In 1984, Karl Raitz and Richard Ulack expanded the ARC's definition to include 445 counties in 13 states, although they removed all counties in Mississippi and added two in New Jersey . Historian John Alexander Williams, in his 2002 book Appalachia: A History , distinguished between
9180-800: The region to believe they were more widespread than in reality. In an 1899 article in The Atlantic , Berea College president William G. Frost attempted to redefine the inhabitants of Appalachia as "noble mountaineers"—relics of the nation's pioneer period whose isolation had left them unaffected by modern times. Entering the 21st century, residents of Appalachia are viewed by many Americans as uneducated and unrefined, resulting in culture-based stereotyping and discrimination in many areas, including employment and housing. Such discrimination has prompted some to seek redress under prevailing federal and state civil rights laws. Appalachia, and especially Kentucky, became nationally known for its violent feuds in
9288-461: The region via the Trail of Tears in the 1830s. Appalachian frontiersmen have long been romanticized for their ruggedness and self-sufficiency. A typical depiction of an Appalachian pioneer involves a hunter wearing a coonskin cap and buckskin clothing , and sporting a long rifle and shoulder-strapped powder horn . Perhaps no single figure symbolizes the Appalachian pioneer more than Daniel Boone ,
9396-561: The region when the Great Depression shattered the economy in the 1930s. African Americans have been present in the region since the 18th century, and currently make up 8% of the ARC-designated region, mostly concentrated in urban areas and former mining and manufacturing towns; The African-American component of Appalachia is sometimes termed Affrilachia . Native Americans, the region's original inhabitants, are now only
9504-412: The region's economic conditions since the commission's founding, the ARC listed 80 counties as "distressed" in 2020, with nearly half of them (38) in Kentucky. Since the 1980s, population growth in southern Appalachia has brought about concerns of farmland loss and hazards to the local environment. Regarding housing development, exurban development , characterized by its low-density housing, has violated
9612-528: The region's history, education in Appalachia has lagged behind the rest of the nation due in part to struggles with funding from respective state governments and an agrarian-oriented population that often did not see a practical need for formal education. Early education in the region evolved from teaching Christian morality and learning to read the Bible in small, one-room schoolhouses that convened in months when children were not needed to help with farm work. After
9720-426: The region's inhabitants as uneducated and unrefined; although these stereotypes still exist to a lesser extent today, sociology studies have since begun to dispel them. While endowed with abundant natural resources, Appalachia has long struggled economically and has been associated with poverty. In the early 20th century, large-scale logging and coal mining firms brought jobs and modern amenities to Appalachia, but by
9828-529: The region's more rural areas. In the 20th century, national trends began to have more of an effect on education in Appalachia, sometimes clashing with the region's traditional values. The Scopes Trial —the nation's most publicized debate over the teaching of the theory of evolution —took place in Dayton, Tennessee , in southern Appalachia in 1925. Despite consolidation and centralization, schools in Appalachia struggled to keep up with federal and state demands into
9936-809: The region's population is Methodist, represented by such bodies as the United Methodist Church , the Free Methodist Church , and the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church . Pentecostal movements within the region include the Church of God (based in Cleveland, Tennessee ) and the Assemblies of God . Scattered Mennonite colonies exist throughout the region. The Appalachian dialect
10044-726: The region. Along with the above-mentioned, some of Appalachia's best known writers include James Agee ( A Death in the Family ), Anne W. Armstrong ( This Day and Time ), Wendell Berry ( Hannah Coulter , The Unforeseen Wilderness: An Essay on Kentucky's Red River Gorge , Selected Poems of Wendell Berry ), Jesse Stuart ( Taps for Private Tussie , The Thread That Runs So True ), Denise Giardina ( The Unquiet Earth , Storming Heaven ), Lee Smith ( Fair and Tender Ladies , On Agate Hill ), Silas House ( Clay's Quilt , A Parchment of Leaves ), Wilma Dykeman ( The Far Family , The Tall Woman ), Keith Maillard ( Alex Driving South , Light in
10152-496: The remote mountain districts. They pitted the men in extended clans against each other for decades, often using assassination and arson as weapons, along with ambushes , gunfights , and pre-arranged shootouts . The infamous Hatfield-McCoy Feud was the best-known of these family feuds. Some of the feuds were continuations of violent local Civil War episodes. Journalists often wrote about the violence, using stereotypes that "city folks" had developed about Appalachia; they interpreted
10260-586: The state's constitution led to calls on both sides for the state's separation into two states. In 1841, Tennessee state senator (and later U.S. president) Andrew Johnson introduced legislation in the Tennessee Senate calling for the creation of a separate state in East Tennessee. The proposed state would have been known as " Frankland " and would have invited like-minded mountain counties in Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama to join it. In 1839 Washington Irving proposed to rename
10368-424: The two are distinguished by the rhotic nature of the Appalachian dialect. Early 20th-century writers believed the Appalachian dialect to be a surviving relic of Old World Scottish or Elizabethan dialects. Recent research suggests, however, that while the dialect has a stronger Scottish influence than other American dialects, most of its distinguishing characteristics have developed in the United States. For much of
10476-418: The usual hierarchical structures of traditional opera, which define and limit the roles of individuals on creative and production teams. The genre of hyperopera involves the collaborations of a diverse group of artists that can portray a variety of meanings or realities. In the postmodern tradition of redefining opera, also seen in the work of Robert Ashley , Meredith Monk , and Robert Wilson , LeBaron replaced
10584-579: The west, culminating in the creation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park , Shenandoah National Park , Cumberland Gap National Historical Park , and the Blue Ridge Parkway in the 1930s. During the same period, New England forester Benton MacKaye led the movement to build the 2,175-mile (3,500 km) Appalachian Trail, stretching from Georgia to Maine . Several significant moments of investment by
10692-755: The whiskey tax in the late 1870s led to an explosion in violence between Appalachian " moonshiners " and federal "revenuers" that lasted through the Prohibition period in the 1920s. The breakdown of authority and law enforcement during the Civil War may have contributed to an increase in clan feuding, which by the 1880s was reported to be a problem across most of Kentucky's Cumberland region as well as Carter County, Tennessee ; Carroll County, Virginia ; and Mingo and Logan counties in West Virginia. Regional writers from this period such as Mary Noailles Murfree and Horace Kephart liked to focus on such sensational aspects of mountain culture, leading readers outside
10800-569: The work "...points to LeBaron's more pervasive interest in music's ability to mold temporality, immersing the listener in a sound world in which time bends, stands still, dances, or conforms to the mechanical measure of the clock". Theater has played an important role in LeBaron's music, with such scores as Concerto for Active Frogs (1974) for voices, three instruments, and tape, and the harp solos I Am an American ... My Government Will Reward You (1988) and Hsing (2002). She has also composed
10908-475: The years following World War I, British folklorist Cecil Sharp brought attention to Southern Appalachia when he noted that its inhabitants still sang hundreds of English and Scottish ballads that had been passed down to them from their ancestors. Commercial recordings of Appalachian musicians in the 1920s (such as the famous 1927 Bristol sessions ) would have a significant impact on the development of country music and bluegrass . Traditional Appalachian music saw
11016-638: Was a student of Chou Wen-chung and Mario Davidovsky . Her doctoral thesis, Telluris Theoria Sacra, was partially inspired by James Gleick's book on chaos theory. She also studied Korean traditional music at the National Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts in Seoul. LeBaron served as composer-in-residence in Washington, DC, sponsored by Meet the Composer from 1993 until 1996. She
11124-421: Was also the first European to apply "Apalachen" specifically to a mountain range as opposed to a village, native tribe, or a southeastern region of North America. The name was not commonly used for the whole mountain range until the late 19th century. A competing and often more popular name was the " Allegheny Mountains ", "Alleghenies", and even "Alleghania". In southern U.S. dialects, the mountains are called
11232-620: Was an assistant professor of music at the University of Pittsburgh from 1996 to 2001. She was appointed Professor of Music at the California Institute of the Arts in 2001, where she has held the Roy E. Disney Family Chair in Musical Composition from 2013 until 2015. In 2024, she retired from teaching and was appointed professor emerita. LeBaron's composition in instrumental, electronic, and performance realms embraces
11340-512: Was an important part of Appalachia's economy), and numerous farms were destroyed, pillaged, or neglected. The actions of both Union and Confederate armies left many inhabitants in the region resentful of government authority and suspicious of outsiders for decades after the war. After the Civil War, northern Appalachia experienced an economic boom. At the same time, economies in the southern region stagnated, especially as Southern Democrats regained control of their respective state legislatures at
11448-643: Was born in Baton Rouge and raised in Memphis and Tuscaloosa. Her father, Gordon, was an advertising executive and bluegrass musician; in addition to singing, he played guitar, banjo, dobro and mandolin. She grew up listening to live bluegrass music at home, and gospel and choral music at the Southern Baptist Church she attended with her family. As a child, LeBaron taught herself to play piano and read music. In her teens she took lessons with
11556-620: Was established in her honor. The Fund aims to assist talented writing students at the university with writing-related travel expenses. Anderson is the author of several poetry collections, the most recent of which is Dear All, ( Four Way Books , 2017), and the founder and editor of the Wick Poetry First Book Series and the Wick Poetry Chapbook Series for Ohio Poets ( Kent State University Press , 1993–2011). In 1971 she co-founded Trellis ,
11664-440: Was home to an estimated 26.3 million people. Since its recognition as a cultural region in the late 19th century, Appalachia has been a source of enduring myths and distortions regarding the isolation, temperament, and behavior of its inhabitants. Early 20th-century writers often engaged in yellow journalism focused on sensationalistic aspects of the region's culture, such as moonshining and clan feuding , portraying
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