Anthony Harkins
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195189506
- eISBN:
- 9780199788835
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195189506.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This book examines the evolution of one of the most pervasive and enduring American icons from the 18th-century to the present day. Spanning film, literature, and the entire expanse of American ...
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This book examines the evolution of one of the most pervasive and enduring American icons from the 18th-century to the present day. Spanning film, literature, and the entire expanse of American popular culture, from comics to country music to television and the Internet, the book argues that the longevity of the hillbilly stems from its ambiguity as a marker of both social derision and regional pride. Typically associated with Appalachia or the Ozarks, the “hillbilly” was viewed by mainstream Americans simultaneously as a violent degenerate who threatens the social order, and as a keeper of traditional values of family, home, and physical production. The character was therefore both a foil to an increasingly urbanizing and industrializing America and a symbol of a nostalgic past free of the problems of contemporary life. The book also argues that “hillbillies” have played a critical role in the construction of whiteness and modernity. Middle-class Americans imagined hillbillies, with their supposedly pure Anglo-Saxon or Scottish origins, as an exotic race, akin to blacks and Indians, but still native and white, as opposed to the growing influx of immigrants in the first half of the 20th century. At the same time, the image's whiteness allowed crude caricatures of Southern mountaineers to persist long after similar ethnic and racial stereotypes had become socially unacceptable.Less
This book examines the evolution of one of the most pervasive and enduring American icons from the 18th-century to the present day. Spanning film, literature, and the entire expanse of American popular culture, from comics to country music to television and the Internet, the book argues that the longevity of the hillbilly stems from its ambiguity as a marker of both social derision and regional pride. Typically associated with Appalachia or the Ozarks, the “hillbilly” was viewed by mainstream Americans simultaneously as a violent degenerate who threatens the social order, and as a keeper of traditional values of family, home, and physical production. The character was therefore both a foil to an increasingly urbanizing and industrializing America and a symbol of a nostalgic past free of the problems of contemporary life. The book also argues that “hillbillies” have played a critical role in the construction of whiteness and modernity. Middle-class Americans imagined hillbillies, with their supposedly pure Anglo-Saxon or Scottish origins, as an exotic race, akin to blacks and Indians, but still native and white, as opposed to the growing influx of immigrants in the first half of the 20th century. At the same time, the image's whiteness allowed crude caricatures of Southern mountaineers to persist long after similar ethnic and racial stereotypes had become socially unacceptable.
Anthony Harkins
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195189506
- eISBN:
- 9780199788835
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195189506.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
The prologue introduces the primary question of the discourse: why did the textual and visual icon of the hillbilly endure throughout the 20th century, long after similar racial and ethnic ...
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The prologue introduces the primary question of the discourse: why did the textual and visual icon of the hillbilly endure throughout the 20th century, long after similar racial and ethnic stereotypes had become publicly intolerable? It discusses how the concepts of cultural space, the “white other” (a group both within and outside the broader racial and cultural category of “whiteness”), and the twin mythic personas of “mountaineer” and “hillbilly” help explain the image's staying power. The central argument is then introduced, that the representation's unique intersection of the past and present, normativeness and otherness, and reality and invention made it malleable enough to be interpreted in strikingly different ways by diverse audiences and individuals, and to endure despite dramatic social and cultural transformation.Less
The prologue introduces the primary question of the discourse: why did the textual and visual icon of the hillbilly endure throughout the 20th century, long after similar racial and ethnic stereotypes had become publicly intolerable? It discusses how the concepts of cultural space, the “white other” (a group both within and outside the broader racial and cultural category of “whiteness”), and the twin mythic personas of “mountaineer” and “hillbilly” help explain the image's staying power. The central argument is then introduced, that the representation's unique intersection of the past and present, normativeness and otherness, and reality and invention made it malleable enough to be interpreted in strikingly different ways by diverse audiences and individuals, and to endure despite dramatic social and cultural transformation.
Anthony Harkins
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195189506
- eISBN:
- 9780199788835
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195189506.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This chapter traces the literary antecedents of the hillbilly representation in America that grew out of the separate but overlapping “image streams” of the New England rustic yokel “Brother ...
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This chapter traces the literary antecedents of the hillbilly representation in America that grew out of the separate but overlapping “image streams” of the New England rustic yokel “Brother Jonathan”, the poor white of the Southern backcountry, and the mythic frontiersman of Appalachia and Arkansas. It examines the cultural construction of the Southern mountain folk from William Byrd's Secret History of the Dividing Line to the song-story “the Arkansas Traveller” to the turn-of-the-century “local colorists”. Although some authors and social commentators used the conception of the mythic mountaineer to denigrate, and others to celebrate the folkways and primitive conditions of the hill people, in all cases this idea ignored the reality of late 19th-century economic and social upheaval in the region, and instead defined the hill folk as a people caught forever in an unceasing past.Less
This chapter traces the literary antecedents of the hillbilly representation in America that grew out of the separate but overlapping “image streams” of the New England rustic yokel “Brother Jonathan”, the poor white of the Southern backcountry, and the mythic frontiersman of Appalachia and Arkansas. It examines the cultural construction of the Southern mountain folk from William Byrd's Secret History of the Dividing Line to the song-story “the Arkansas Traveller” to the turn-of-the-century “local colorists”. Although some authors and social commentators used the conception of the mythic mountaineer to denigrate, and others to celebrate the folkways and primitive conditions of the hill people, in all cases this idea ignored the reality of late 19th-century economic and social upheaval in the region, and instead defined the hill folk as a people caught forever in an unceasing past.
Anthony Harkins
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195189506
- eISBN:
- 9780199788835
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195189506.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This chapter follows the evolution of the word and the image of “hillbilly” from its first appearance in print in 1900 to the end of World War One. Starting as a regional label with a specific ...
More
This chapter follows the evolution of the word and the image of “hillbilly” from its first appearance in print in 1900 to the end of World War One. Starting as a regional label with a specific localized significance, the term and persona were soon spread by jokebook writers, professional linguists and, above all, the new mass medium of motion pictures. In hundreds of action shorts, directors such as D. W. Griffith (himself a Kentuckian) depicted a violent and lawless people whose feuds and drunkenness posed a serious threat to the “proper” late-Victorian social order. By the mid 1910s, however, silent films and other popular culture media began to present a parallel but distinct interpretation of the mountaineer as a comical foil for bumbling urban naifs. Despite its evolving meaning, “hillbilly” remained a relatively uncommon and thoroughly ambiguous label throughout this era.Less
This chapter follows the evolution of the word and the image of “hillbilly” from its first appearance in print in 1900 to the end of World War One. Starting as a regional label with a specific localized significance, the term and persona were soon spread by jokebook writers, professional linguists and, above all, the new mass medium of motion pictures. In hundreds of action shorts, directors such as D. W. Griffith (himself a Kentuckian) depicted a violent and lawless people whose feuds and drunkenness posed a serious threat to the “proper” late-Victorian social order. By the mid 1910s, however, silent films and other popular culture media began to present a parallel but distinct interpretation of the mountaineer as a comical foil for bumbling urban naifs. Despite its evolving meaning, “hillbilly” remained a relatively uncommon and thoroughly ambiguous label throughout this era.
Anthony Harkins
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195189506
- eISBN:
- 9780199788835
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195189506.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This chapter focuses on hillbilly depictions in motion pictures, the dominant media of the mid-century. The continual resignification of the mountaineer/hillbilly dual image from the end of World War ...
More
This chapter focuses on hillbilly depictions in motion pictures, the dominant media of the mid-century. The continual resignification of the mountaineer/hillbilly dual image from the end of World War One through the mid-1950s is traced through full-length features, animated shorts, government documentaries, and the long running Ma and Pa Kettle series. The initial focus on violence and social threat was steadily replaced by a growing emphasis on farcical comedy, particularly in the “B” level films produced by Republic Pictures. With the advent of an era of postwar prosperity, however, the vogue of mountain films faded and the hillbilly image primarily lived on only in the domesticated version the Kettles embodied. But as later films such as Deliverance (1972) would show, the early-20th-century characterization of mountain folk as depraved savages remained just under the surface of this supposedly light-hearted fare.Less
This chapter focuses on hillbilly depictions in motion pictures, the dominant media of the mid-century. The continual resignification of the mountaineer/hillbilly dual image from the end of World War One through the mid-1950s is traced through full-length features, animated shorts, government documentaries, and the long running Ma and Pa Kettle series. The initial focus on violence and social threat was steadily replaced by a growing emphasis on farcical comedy, particularly in the “B” level films produced by Republic Pictures. With the advent of an era of postwar prosperity, however, the vogue of mountain films faded and the hillbilly image primarily lived on only in the domesticated version the Kettles embodied. But as later films such as Deliverance (1972) would show, the early-20th-century characterization of mountain folk as depraved savages remained just under the surface of this supposedly light-hearted fare.
Bernard Debarbieux and Gilles Rudaz
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226031118
- eISBN:
- 9780226031255
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226031255.001.0001
- Subject:
- Earth Sciences and Geography, Cultural and Historical Geography
This book looks at mountains from a very original perspective, focusing on political and scientific imaginaries of mountains throughout the world. It aims to study the processes through which modern ...
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This book looks at mountains from a very original perspective, focusing on political and scientific imaginaries of mountains throughout the world. It aims to study the processes through which modern societies and states "make" mountains. In other words, it focuses on the social processes at work in the identification, the qualification, and the transformation of mountains. These processes are considered as political processes, as they promote vision of what these mountain areas and populations should be. The book shows, through numerous and worldwide case studies running through the last three centuries, that the meanings of mountains have been varying a lot according contexts (times and places). Numerous political projects have been projected onto these areas: "natural borders", national emblems, exploitation of the resources located in the highlands, promotion of sustainable development policies, etc. For all these various and sometimes competing projects, there is a specific way to conceive and describe mountains. This books pays great attention to the inhabitants, especially when designated as "mountaineers", either in a positive way, like as guardians of the traditions or in a negative way, like when they are qualified as backwards communities. It starts from the deep renewal of the notion of the mountain in the Western culture at the time of Enlightment, describes the social and political effects on this renewal in Europe and North America. Then, it explains how this model was transferred to the rest of the world, through colonization and globalization, and interfered with existing local visions.Less
This book looks at mountains from a very original perspective, focusing on political and scientific imaginaries of mountains throughout the world. It aims to study the processes through which modern societies and states "make" mountains. In other words, it focuses on the social processes at work in the identification, the qualification, and the transformation of mountains. These processes are considered as political processes, as they promote vision of what these mountain areas and populations should be. The book shows, through numerous and worldwide case studies running through the last three centuries, that the meanings of mountains have been varying a lot according contexts (times and places). Numerous political projects have been projected onto these areas: "natural borders", national emblems, exploitation of the resources located in the highlands, promotion of sustainable development policies, etc. For all these various and sometimes competing projects, there is a specific way to conceive and describe mountains. This books pays great attention to the inhabitants, especially when designated as "mountaineers", either in a positive way, like as guardians of the traditions or in a negative way, like when they are qualified as backwards communities. It starts from the deep renewal of the notion of the mountain in the Western culture at the time of Enlightment, describes the social and political effects on this renewal in Europe and North America. Then, it explains how this model was transferred to the rest of the world, through colonization and globalization, and interfered with existing local visions.
Bernard Debarbieux, Gilles Rudaz, and Martin F. Price
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226031118
- eISBN:
- 9780226031255
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226031255.003.0004
- Subject:
- Earth Sciences and Geography, Cultural and Historical Geography
Chapter 3 focuses on the people inhabitant the mountains as defined according to the modern, scientific way. It focuses on the making of a social and political stereotype – the mountaineer – in the ...
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Chapter 3 focuses on the people inhabitant the mountains as defined according to the modern, scientific way. It focuses on the making of a social and political stereotype – the mountaineer – in the context of the making of modern societies and nations. In many cases such as Switzerland, Italy, the Balkans, and Scotland, the images of mountaineers has been a major political issue in the construction of a national imaginary from the nineteenth century.This chapter explains how the category “mountaineer” happened to point at, first populations living in the mountains, second mountain climbers using the reference to mountains as a mode of social distinction. Regarding the first group, it details the stereotypes at work in discourses on the nation : the brutal, thieving, bellicose mountaineer; the proud, hard-working, obstinate, and courageous mountaineer; backward communities; etc.Less
Chapter 3 focuses on the people inhabitant the mountains as defined according to the modern, scientific way. It focuses on the making of a social and political stereotype – the mountaineer – in the context of the making of modern societies and nations. In many cases such as Switzerland, Italy, the Balkans, and Scotland, the images of mountaineers has been a major political issue in the construction of a national imaginary from the nineteenth century.This chapter explains how the category “mountaineer” happened to point at, first populations living in the mountains, second mountain climbers using the reference to mountains as a mode of social distinction. Regarding the first group, it details the stereotypes at work in discourses on the nation : the brutal, thieving, bellicose mountaineer; the proud, hard-working, obstinate, and courageous mountaineer; backward communities; etc.
Steven E. Nash
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780813125817
- eISBN:
- 9780813135533
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813125817.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, American History: Civil War
The Civil War brought privation, loss of life, and governmental power to western Carolinians' doorsteps to an unprecedented degree. Conscription officers, tax collectors, and soldiers became ...
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The Civil War brought privation, loss of life, and governmental power to western Carolinians' doorsteps to an unprecedented degree. Conscription officers, tax collectors, and soldiers became commonplace in the region during the war. White mountaineers greeted the Richmond government's policies with more of an attitude of exasperation than the defiant opposition that many later observers read into their responses. When the Richmond government inaugurated the first draft of the war in April 1862, its exemption for white men on farms with 20 or more slaves led to a spike in desertion and violence.Less
The Civil War brought privation, loss of life, and governmental power to western Carolinians' doorsteps to an unprecedented degree. Conscription officers, tax collectors, and soldiers became commonplace in the region during the war. White mountaineers greeted the Richmond government's policies with more of an attitude of exasperation than the defiant opposition that many later observers read into their responses. When the Richmond government inaugurated the first draft of the war in April 1862, its exemption for white men on farms with 20 or more slaves led to a spike in desertion and violence.
Tait Keller
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469625034
- eISBN:
- 9781469625058
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469625034.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History
This book explores the paradox that Europe’s seemingly peaceful “playgrounds” were battlegrounds where competing visions of Germany and Austria clashed. Using newly available archival materials from ...
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This book explores the paradox that Europe’s seemingly peaceful “playgrounds” were battlegrounds where competing visions of Germany and Austria clashed. Using newly available archival materials from state and private collections throughout Germany, Austria, as well as Switzerland, and Italy, Apostles of the Alps shows how recreational pursuits in the Eastern Alps, Alpinism, placed distant mountains at the heart of German nationhood questions. The book explores how Alpinism changed the borderlands both physically and discursively and analyzes what these Alpine intersections meant for Germans and Austrians. The Alps staged the struggles that fundamentally shaped Germany and Austria, and yet the mountains get overlooked as places of meaningful historical change. Apostles of the Alps takes an original approach that incorporates environmental, social, and cultural history and situates tourism and environmental change on borderlands as central to nation building projects. Unlike other studies, this book emphasizes Austria’s pivotal place in Germany’s troubled modernization. The emotionally charged relationship that Germans and Austrians shared with the Alps reveals the importance of the periphery for both states. Their mountaineering clubs opened the Alpine frontier to the masses in hopes of bonding patriotic loyalties to a landscape that united Germany and Austria. But tourists carried their prejudices with them to mountains, politicizing the Alps. Now pressures that had formed the contours of the modern state—political fights, social conflicts, culture wars, and environmental crusades—shaped the peaks. These borderlands did not reflect the struggles occurring at the center; they were the center of nationhood struggles.Less
This book explores the paradox that Europe’s seemingly peaceful “playgrounds” were battlegrounds where competing visions of Germany and Austria clashed. Using newly available archival materials from state and private collections throughout Germany, Austria, as well as Switzerland, and Italy, Apostles of the Alps shows how recreational pursuits in the Eastern Alps, Alpinism, placed distant mountains at the heart of German nationhood questions. The book explores how Alpinism changed the borderlands both physically and discursively and analyzes what these Alpine intersections meant for Germans and Austrians. The Alps staged the struggles that fundamentally shaped Germany and Austria, and yet the mountains get overlooked as places of meaningful historical change. Apostles of the Alps takes an original approach that incorporates environmental, social, and cultural history and situates tourism and environmental change on borderlands as central to nation building projects. Unlike other studies, this book emphasizes Austria’s pivotal place in Germany’s troubled modernization. The emotionally charged relationship that Germans and Austrians shared with the Alps reveals the importance of the periphery for both states. Their mountaineering clubs opened the Alpine frontier to the masses in hopes of bonding patriotic loyalties to a landscape that united Germany and Austria. But tourists carried their prejudices with them to mountains, politicizing the Alps. Now pressures that had formed the contours of the modern state—political fights, social conflicts, culture wars, and environmental crusades—shaped the peaks. These borderlands did not reflect the struggles occurring at the center; they were the center of nationhood struggles.
THOMAS KIFFMEYER
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780813125091
- eISBN:
- 9780813135175
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813125091.003.0009
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
Despite efforts to integrate the Appalachian South into mainstream America being perceived as an “unfinished revolution” and how it caused various problems, this points out some of the fundamental ...
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Despite efforts to integrate the Appalachian South into mainstream America being perceived as an “unfinished revolution” and how it caused various problems, this points out some of the fundamental lessons regarding the nature of change, change agents, liberal reform, and of those that opposed these changes and reforms. Also, looking at these events helps us to understand the War on Poverty. Since the first attempt at “reconstruction”, various government agencies and interest groups and the local elites dominated what was viewed to be beneficial change. The assumptions of both the AVs and the CSM revealed a cultural explanation of the inadequacies of the mountaineers in their efforts.Less
Despite efforts to integrate the Appalachian South into mainstream America being perceived as an “unfinished revolution” and how it caused various problems, this points out some of the fundamental lessons regarding the nature of change, change agents, liberal reform, and of those that opposed these changes and reforms. Also, looking at these events helps us to understand the War on Poverty. Since the first attempt at “reconstruction”, various government agencies and interest groups and the local elites dominated what was viewed to be beneficial change. The assumptions of both the AVs and the CSM revealed a cultural explanation of the inadequacies of the mountaineers in their efforts.
Louisa Gairn
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748633111
- eISBN:
- 9780748653447
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748633111.003.0002
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Scottish Studies
This chapter considers the writings of Robert Louis Stevenson alongside those of nineteenth-century mountaineering intellectuals John Veitch and John Stuart Blackie, land rights campaigners, and the ...
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This chapter considers the writings of Robert Louis Stevenson alongside those of nineteenth-century mountaineering intellectuals John Veitch and John Stuart Blackie, land rights campaigners, and the poetry of Gaelic crofters, which, taken together, demonstrate a crucial shift towards a more bodily experience of the natural world, a new ‘feeling for nature’ spurred by developments in biological science which offered fresh perspectives on the relationship between self and world. It reports that the period from the 1850s until the end of the century saw the activity of mountaineering become increasingly popular in the British Isles, and become not only a sport but a ‘science of a highly complex character, cultivated by trained experts, with a vocabulary, an artillery, and rigorous methods of its own’.Less
This chapter considers the writings of Robert Louis Stevenson alongside those of nineteenth-century mountaineering intellectuals John Veitch and John Stuart Blackie, land rights campaigners, and the poetry of Gaelic crofters, which, taken together, demonstrate a crucial shift towards a more bodily experience of the natural world, a new ‘feeling for nature’ spurred by developments in biological science which offered fresh perspectives on the relationship between self and world. It reports that the period from the 1850s until the end of the century saw the activity of mountaineering become increasingly popular in the British Isles, and become not only a sport but a ‘science of a highly complex character, cultivated by trained experts, with a vocabulary, an artillery, and rigorous methods of its own’.
Linda Stratmann
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300173802
- eISBN:
- 9780300194838
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300173802.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
This chapter describes Queensberry's experience of mountain scrambling. At Cambridge, Queensberry formed a close friendship that was, for a time, to supply a much-needed focus to his life. His ...
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This chapter describes Queensberry's experience of mountain scrambling. At Cambridge, Queensberry formed a close friendship that was, for a time, to supply a much-needed focus to his life. His twenty-first birthday was to shape the rest of his life, but in a way that no one could have anticipated. Queensberry was never to write about his journey, which must have been two to three days of grief and frustration. When he learned that Francis had still not been found, all hope vanished. Queensberry offered a large sum of money to anyone who could recover the body and, despite having no experience in mountaineering, decided to join the search party due to go out on the following day.Less
This chapter describes Queensberry's experience of mountain scrambling. At Cambridge, Queensberry formed a close friendship that was, for a time, to supply a much-needed focus to his life. His twenty-first birthday was to shape the rest of his life, but in a way that no one could have anticipated. Queensberry was never to write about his journey, which must have been two to three days of grief and frustration. When he learned that Francis had still not been found, all hope vanished. Queensberry offered a large sum of money to anyone who could recover the body and, despite having no experience in mountaineering, decided to join the search party due to go out on the following day.
Christi M. Smith
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781469630687
- eISBN:
- 9781469630717
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469630687.003.0007
- Subject:
- Education, History of Education
Chapter 7 chronicles the efforts of Berea’s leaders to construct Appalachians as a particular brand of poor whites, and without the stigma of the Confederacy attached to other Southern whites. By the ...
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Chapter 7 chronicles the efforts of Berea’s leaders to construct Appalachians as a particular brand of poor whites, and without the stigma of the Confederacy attached to other Southern whites. By the mid-1880s, a new wave of benevolent agencies launched a new form of colleges designed for this newly categorized group— “mountain education.” The mountain education movement treated poor white Southerners as deserving of Northern philanthropic aid by arguing that class oppression could rival racial oppression. Here, competitive dynamics, as navigated by organizational leaders, produced not only particular types of education but also consecrated groups of people.Less
Chapter 7 chronicles the efforts of Berea’s leaders to construct Appalachians as a particular brand of poor whites, and without the stigma of the Confederacy attached to other Southern whites. By the mid-1880s, a new wave of benevolent agencies launched a new form of colleges designed for this newly categorized group— “mountain education.” The mountain education movement treated poor white Southerners as deserving of Northern philanthropic aid by arguing that class oppression could rival racial oppression. Here, competitive dynamics, as navigated by organizational leaders, produced not only particular types of education but also consecrated groups of people.
Christopher Wilkinson
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617031687
- eISBN:
- 9781617031694
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617031687.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
The coal fields of West Virginia would seem an unlikely market for big band jazz during the Great Depression. That a prosperous African American audience, dominated by those involved with the coal ...
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The coal fields of West Virginia would seem an unlikely market for big band jazz during the Great Depression. That a prosperous African American audience, dominated by those involved with the coal industry, was there for jazz tours would seem equally improbable. This book shows that, contrary to expectations, black Mountaineers flocked to dances by the hundreds, in many instances traveling considerable distances to hear bands led by Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Andy Kirk, Jimmie Lunceford, and Chick Webb, among numerous others. Indeed, as one musician who toured the state would recall, “All the bands were goin’ to West Virginia.” The comparative prosperity of the coal miners, thanks to New Deal industrial policies, was what attracted the bands to the state. This study discusses that prosperity, as well as the larger political environment that provided black Mountaineers with a degree of autonomy not experienced further south. The author demonstrates the importance of radio and the black press both in introducing this music and in keeping black West Virginians up to date with its latest developments. The book explores connections between local entrepreneurs who staged the dances and the national management of the bands that played those engagements. In analyzing black audiences’ aesthetic preferences, the author reveals that many black West Virginians preferred dancing to a variety of music, not just jazz. Finally, the book shows that bands now associated almost exclusively with jazz were more than willing to satisfy those audience preferences with arrangements in other styles of dance music.Less
The coal fields of West Virginia would seem an unlikely market for big band jazz during the Great Depression. That a prosperous African American audience, dominated by those involved with the coal industry, was there for jazz tours would seem equally improbable. This book shows that, contrary to expectations, black Mountaineers flocked to dances by the hundreds, in many instances traveling considerable distances to hear bands led by Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Andy Kirk, Jimmie Lunceford, and Chick Webb, among numerous others. Indeed, as one musician who toured the state would recall, “All the bands were goin’ to West Virginia.” The comparative prosperity of the coal miners, thanks to New Deal industrial policies, was what attracted the bands to the state. This study discusses that prosperity, as well as the larger political environment that provided black Mountaineers with a degree of autonomy not experienced further south. The author demonstrates the importance of radio and the black press both in introducing this music and in keeping black West Virginians up to date with its latest developments. The book explores connections between local entrepreneurs who staged the dances and the national management of the bands that played those engagements. In analyzing black audiences’ aesthetic preferences, the author reveals that many black West Virginians preferred dancing to a variety of music, not just jazz. Finally, the book shows that bands now associated almost exclusively with jazz were more than willing to satisfy those audience preferences with arrangements in other styles of dance music.
Christopher Wilkinson
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617031687
- eISBN:
- 9781617031694
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617031687.003.0011
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
This chapter discusses the principal forces that brought to a close in 1942 the lively engagement with big bands that black Mountaineers had enjoyed for a number of years. It suggests that this ...
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This chapter discusses the principal forces that brought to a close in 1942 the lively engagement with big bands that black Mountaineers had enjoyed for a number of years. It suggests that this development may be attributed to wartime policies concerning rationing and a reduction in the number of employed black miners. The chapter analyzes several issues embedded within the history of the of big band musical culture and explains some of the reasons why this culture flourished in West Virginia to an extent not to be observed in states lying to its east, west, or south.Less
This chapter discusses the principal forces that brought to a close in 1942 the lively engagement with big bands that black Mountaineers had enjoyed for a number of years. It suggests that this development may be attributed to wartime policies concerning rationing and a reduction in the number of employed black miners. The chapter analyzes several issues embedded within the history of the of big band musical culture and explains some of the reasons why this culture flourished in West Virginia to an extent not to be observed in states lying to its east, west, or south.
Mark Liechty
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226428802
- eISBN:
- 9780226429137
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226429137.003.0003
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
In the 1950s Western media coverage of Nepal reached unprecedented levels. With Nepal a Cold War “front line” state, Western news media published surprisingly extensive coverage of Nepali politics. ...
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In the 1950s Western media coverage of Nepal reached unprecedented levels. With Nepal a Cold War “front line” state, Western news media published surprisingly extensive coverage of Nepali politics. But it was popular culture pursuits that led to the real explosion of press attention to Nepal. The 1950s were the “golden years” of Himalayan Mountaineering that saw the world’s highest mountains (most of which are in Nepal) fall to massive, state-sponsored expeditions that attracted extensive press coverage. Less well-remembered today are the dozens of high-profile “yeti hunts” conducted by eccentric Westerners intent on proving the existence of the “abominable snowman” that garnered yet more breathless media coverage for Nepal in the 1950s. The combination of Cold War politics, mountaineering, and yeti-hunting captured the Western popular imagination spawning hundreds of B-grade films, novels, and comic books set in the Himalayas and featuring an endless assortment of climbers, communist villains, yetis, and monks all battling to save the planet (and generate sales). For those coming of age in the 1950s Nepal's earlier image as an exotic, mystical, "forbidden" land was overlaid with a new reputation for adventure, helping set the stage for Nepal’s pioneering forays into “adventure tourism” in the 1970s.Less
In the 1950s Western media coverage of Nepal reached unprecedented levels. With Nepal a Cold War “front line” state, Western news media published surprisingly extensive coverage of Nepali politics. But it was popular culture pursuits that led to the real explosion of press attention to Nepal. The 1950s were the “golden years” of Himalayan Mountaineering that saw the world’s highest mountains (most of which are in Nepal) fall to massive, state-sponsored expeditions that attracted extensive press coverage. Less well-remembered today are the dozens of high-profile “yeti hunts” conducted by eccentric Westerners intent on proving the existence of the “abominable snowman” that garnered yet more breathless media coverage for Nepal in the 1950s. The combination of Cold War politics, mountaineering, and yeti-hunting captured the Western popular imagination spawning hundreds of B-grade films, novels, and comic books set in the Himalayas and featuring an endless assortment of climbers, communist villains, yetis, and monks all battling to save the planet (and generate sales). For those coming of age in the 1950s Nepal's earlier image as an exotic, mystical, "forbidden" land was overlaid with a new reputation for adventure, helping set the stage for Nepal’s pioneering forays into “adventure tourism” in the 1970s.
Christopher Wilkinson
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617031687
- eISBN:
- 9781617031694
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617031687.003.0007
- Subject:
- Music, History, American
This chapter discusses the evidence of the comparative economic prosperity enjoyed by black Mountaineers in West Virginia following the implementation of New Deal policies as reflected in a dramatic ...
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This chapter discusses the evidence of the comparative economic prosperity enjoyed by black Mountaineers in West Virginia following the implementation of New Deal policies as reflected in a dramatic increase in the number of public dances. It provides statistics showing an increase in the number of coalfield communities that provided sites for public dances during the period from 1933 to 1945, and also lists territory bands performing in West Virginia during this period.Less
This chapter discusses the evidence of the comparative economic prosperity enjoyed by black Mountaineers in West Virginia following the implementation of New Deal policies as reflected in a dramatic increase in the number of public dances. It provides statistics showing an increase in the number of coalfield communities that provided sites for public dances during the period from 1933 to 1945, and also lists territory bands performing in West Virginia during this period.
Catherine W. Hollis
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780983533900
- eISBN:
- 9781781382202
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9780983533900.003.0024
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter begins by reading from an essay called “A Tent of Her Own,” originally published in 1982 in the Bryn Mawr Alumnae Bulletin. Written by the author's mother, the essay has a rescue fantasy ...
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This chapter begins by reading from an essay called “A Tent of Her Own,” originally published in 1982 in the Bryn Mawr Alumnae Bulletin. Written by the author's mother, the essay has a rescue fantasy about Virginia Woolf and proposes that had Woolf taken up mountaineering, as her father—Leslie Stephen—had done, she would have lived a longer, happier, and healthier life. The chapter attempts to convince readers that this vision of Virginia Woolf as a mountaineer was not as unlikely a scenario as it might first appear. It does so primarily through a reading of Woolf's late short story “The Symbol” (1941) which, through its attention to the problem of accurately describing a mountain, represents a return to Stephen's Alpine legacy.Less
This chapter begins by reading from an essay called “A Tent of Her Own,” originally published in 1982 in the Bryn Mawr Alumnae Bulletin. Written by the author's mother, the essay has a rescue fantasy about Virginia Woolf and proposes that had Woolf taken up mountaineering, as her father—Leslie Stephen—had done, she would have lived a longer, happier, and healthier life. The chapter attempts to convince readers that this vision of Virginia Woolf as a mountaineer was not as unlikely a scenario as it might first appear. It does so primarily through a reading of Woolf's late short story “The Symbol” (1941) which, through its attention to the problem of accurately describing a mountain, represents a return to Stephen's Alpine legacy.
Abbie Garrington
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780748693252
- eISBN:
- 9781474412346
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748693252.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter considers the physical and emotional intimacies of both epistolary practice and the rope belay of mountaineering as affective “binding lines,” examples of the body’s “webbed relations”. ...
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This chapter considers the physical and emotional intimacies of both epistolary practice and the rope belay of mountaineering as affective “binding lines,” examples of the body’s “webbed relations”. These two activities are brought together in the figures of Virginia Woolf and the mountaineer and letter-writer George Mallory, as both climbing and epistolary practice are figured as forms of textual and somatic contact in which brain, body, and world are intertwined. The chapter explores the connection between these two tactile and reciprocal acts – and the connections produced between a letter-writing woman and the climbers she observes – in Woolf’s late, Alpine story ‘The Symbol’.Less
This chapter considers the physical and emotional intimacies of both epistolary practice and the rope belay of mountaineering as affective “binding lines,” examples of the body’s “webbed relations”. These two activities are brought together in the figures of Virginia Woolf and the mountaineer and letter-writer George Mallory, as both climbing and epistolary practice are figured as forms of textual and somatic contact in which brain, body, and world are intertwined. The chapter explores the connection between these two tactile and reciprocal acts – and the connections produced between a letter-writing woman and the climbers she observes – in Woolf’s late, Alpine story ‘The Symbol’.
Catherine W. Hollis
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780989082624
- eISBN:
- 9781781384961
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9780989082624.003.0017
- Subject:
- Literature, Poetry
This chapter focuses on Leslie Stephen's mountaineering, from his footsteps up mountains to his daughter's knowledge of glaciology, in Mrs. Dalloway. It considers Virginia Woolf's characterization of ...
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This chapter focuses on Leslie Stephen's mountaineering, from his footsteps up mountains to his daughter's knowledge of glaciology, in Mrs. Dalloway. It considers Virginia Woolf's characterization of Clarissa Dalloway, and her responses to grief, time, and trauma, in relation to order and emotional disorder. Clarissa (and a young Virginia Stephen) would have been familiar with the biologist Thomas Huxley and the physicist John Tyndall as Victorian proponents of secularism, supporters of Charles Darwin, and members of the influential X Club, a social club organized around a “devotion to science, pure and free, untrammeled by religious dogmas.” The chapter then examines Tyndall's influence on Woolf as far as her own interest in the wave-like structure of identity over time is concerned. It also considers Clarissa's frozen, or repressed, grief and how it generates a skepticism informed by Victorian earth science that downplays the human era in favor of the planetary epoch.Less
This chapter focuses on Leslie Stephen's mountaineering, from his footsteps up mountains to his daughter's knowledge of glaciology, in Mrs. Dalloway. It considers Virginia Woolf's characterization of Clarissa Dalloway, and her responses to grief, time, and trauma, in relation to order and emotional disorder. Clarissa (and a young Virginia Stephen) would have been familiar with the biologist Thomas Huxley and the physicist John Tyndall as Victorian proponents of secularism, supporters of Charles Darwin, and members of the influential X Club, a social club organized around a “devotion to science, pure and free, untrammeled by religious dogmas.” The chapter then examines Tyndall's influence on Woolf as far as her own interest in the wave-like structure of identity over time is concerned. It also considers Clarissa's frozen, or repressed, grief and how it generates a skepticism informed by Victorian earth science that downplays the human era in favor of the planetary epoch.
