Literacy in the Mountains: Community, Newspapers, and Writing in Appalachia

by Samantha NeCamp

Overview

After the 2016 presidential election, popular media branded Appalachia as "Trump Country," decrying its inhabitants as ignorant fearmongers voting against their own interests. And since the 1880s, there have been many, including travel writers and absentee landowners, who have framed mountain people as uneducated and hostile. These stereotypes ultimately ward off potential investments in the region's educational system and skew how students understand themselves and the place they call home.

Attacking these misrepresentations head on, Literacy in the Mountains: Community, Newspapers, and Writing in Appalachia reclaims the long history of literacy in the Appalachian region. Focusing on five Kentucky newspapers printed between 1885 and 1920, Samantha NeCamp explores the complex ways readers in the mountains negotiated their local and national circumstances through editorials, advertisements, and correspondence. In local newspapers, community action groups announced meeting times and philanthropists raised funds for a network of hitherto unknown private schools. Preserved in print, these stories and others reveal an engaged citizenry specifically concerned with education. Combining literacy and journalism studies, NeCamp demonstrates that Appalachians are not—and never have been—an illiterate, isolated people.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813178875
Publisher:	University Press of Kentucky
Publication date:	02/18/2020
Series:	Place Matters: New Directions in Appalachian Studies
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	146
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Samantha NeCamp is assistant professor of English at the University of Cincinnati, studying Appalachian and immigrant rhetorics and literacies. She is the author of Adult Literacy and American Identity: The Moonlight Schools and Americanization Programs.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Recovering Literacy: A Case for the News as Archive
Sponsoring Literacy in Appalachia
Writing a Community
Schooling Appalachia
Conclusion

What People are Saying About This

Sara Webb-Sunderhaus

"NeCamp counters an extensive historical narrative of Appalachian illiteracy by documenting the rich literacy practices revealed in the archives and the deeply complex, rhetorically savvy strategies in which Appalachian writers engaged. With its impressive analysis of historical uses of literacy, Literacy in the Mountains makes a significant addition to the fields of Appalachian and literacy studies."

Kim Donehower

"NeCamp's incisive and lively analysis responds to media portrayals of Appalachia as a foil to the presumed good taste, good sense, and critical literacy of the rest of the US. Mining community newspapers from turn-of-the-twentieth-century Appalachian Kentucky, she reveals the long history of nuanced politics, commitment to schooling, and valued reading and writing practices in the region. NeCamp makes a critical contribution to the complex histories of literacy in a region so often stereotyped as illiterate."

Peter Mortensen

"Marshaling detailed evidence, Literacy in the Mountains rejects claims of exceptional illiteracy in the southern mountains—claims that are being repeated with malice to this very day. Author Samantha NeCamp's brilliant exploration of print cultures long ignored makes invaluable contributions to scholarship in both writing studies and Appalachian studies, illuminating what the two fields can gain by sharing a critical perspective on literacy in the rural United States."

From the Publisher

"NeCamp counters an extensive historical narrative of Appalachian illiteracy by documenting the rich literacy practices revealed in the archives and the deeply complex, rhetorically savvy strategies in which Appalachian writers engaged. With its impressive analysis of historical uses of literacy, Literacy in the Mountains makes a significant addition to the fields of Appalachian and literacy studies." — Sara Webb-Sunderhaus, coeditor of Rereading Appalachia: Literacy, Place, and Cultural Resistance

Editorial Reviews

Pointing to the clear and abundant evidence of a high level of engagement between readers and their respective community publications, NeCamp paints a picture of an informed, intelligent and definitely not illiterate Appalachian population at a time when they were becoming widely known as anything but.

Corbin News Journal

Marshaling detailed evidence, Literacy in the Mountains rejects claims of exceptional illiteracy in the southern mountains—claims that are being repeated with malice to this very day. Author Samantha NeCamp's brilliant exploration of print cultures long ignored makes invaluable contributions to scholarship in both writing studies and Appalachian studies, illuminating what the two fields can gain by sharing a critical perspective on literacy in the rural United States.

Peter Mortensen

NeCamp's incisive and lively analysis responds to media portrayals of Appalachia as a foil to the presumed good taste, good sense, and critical literacy of the rest of the US. Mining community newspapers from turn-of-the-twentieth-century Appalachian Kentucky, she reveals the long history of nuanced politics, commitment to schooling, and valued reading and writing practices in the region. NeCamp makes a critical contribution to the complex histories of literacy in a region so often stereotyped as illiterate.

Kim Donehower

NeCamp counters an extensive historical narrative of Appalachian illiteracy by documenting the rich literacy practices revealed in the archives and the deeply complex, rhetorically savvy strategies in which Appalachian writers engaged. With its impressive analysis of historical uses of literacy, Literacy in the Mountains makes a significant addition to the fields of Appalachian and literacy studies.

Sara Webb-Sunderhaus

"Pointing to the clear and abundant evidence of a high level of engagement between readers and their respective community publications, NeCamp paints a picture of an informed, intelligent and definitely not illiterate Appalachian population at a time when they were becoming widely known as anything but." — Corbin News Journal

From the Publisher