IDS 2006 - Southern Appalachia: Literature, Music and the Environment

Credits: 4
From Johnny Cash and the Carter family to Alison Krause and the Dixie Chicks, from the novel Bastard Out of Carolina to the Academy Award Winning O Brother Where Art Thou? to visits to the mountains themselves – through a multidisciplinary lens, this course will explore the music, literature and environment of the Southern Appalachians in an attempt to dispel “hillbilly” myths and reveal the richness of the culture and landscape. Students will examine the music that came out of the mountain hollers to worldwide renown. They will hear the voices of Appalachian people in regional literature – short stories, poems and memoir – and in documentaries and feature length film. And they will encounter the beauty of the world’s oldest mountains and conversely the devastating impact of coal mining – from the local acidification of Appalachian watersheds to the toxic contamination of air streams that traverse the earth to its impact on global warming.