Master of Humanities (MHum), Wright State University, 2008, Humanities

The purpose of this project was to extend the literature on the influence of family in the preservation of Appalachian traditional music since few scholars have focused their research on this topic. The family was the first institution in the Appalachian Mountain area, and families preserved the music by performing in their homes for themselves and friends. Families preserved the traditional music, passing it down to future generations. The music was a part of the everyday life of the Appalachian people, and it was performed, remembered, and taken with them wherever they went. Even though the music changed as the culture was influenced by outside forces, the family preserved the culture and traditions, including the musical traditions. This thesis includes the historical background of Appalachia and the settlement of the area, the values of the Appalachian people, the importance of Appalachian families in preserving the musical traditions, and the ballad musical styles of the Carter Family, the Ritchie Family, and the Queen Family.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2009, Interdisciplinary Arts (Fine Arts)

Appalachians are typically represented in visual culture as homogenized: white and poor. For the rest of the country tuned into to American visual culture, Appalachia is nothing more than America's backwoods country, crawling with hillbillies, peopled by incestuous families, and stocked with slovenly welfare abusers. In the spirit of recent Appalachian scholarship's reclamation of Appalachian heterogeneity via challenges to what scholars have referred to as the “Appalachian Myth,” this study examines the rhetoric of Appalachian stereotypes in visual culture, observes scenarios in which they construct external and internal “others,” and theorizes the ways in which images promote prejudice, classism, and gender disparities and deny the existence of richly diverse cultural traditions within the region. The visual ephemera covered in this project are not studied or organized as artifacts in an historical taxonomy. Instead, they are understood as subjects within a visual grammatical system. This system establishes boundaries between Appalachia and America. Thus, the subjects and materials studied – Jesco White: The Dancing Outlaw, media coverage of the 2006 Sago mine disaster, Jessica Lynch and Lynddie England, Hillbilly Days, Redneck Games, and The Descent – care treated as iconic phrases within a larger visual etymology or taxonomy of identity. By treating images as grammatical rhetorics and situating them within the context of contemporary feminist and visual studies theories, this dissertation offers a new theoretical framework to study the construction of identity through the deployment and rhetoric of imagery.

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2024, Arts and Sciences: English

In Listening to Appalachian Voices in the Writing Classroom, I argue that the cultivation of meaningful student-teacher relationships between Appalachian students and composition teachers is pivotal to the development of meaningful learning and literacy practices, as well as the creation of a culturally valuable academic and literacy identity. My dissertation builds on the work of composition pedagogy scholarship, Appalachian studies, and relational-cultural theory (RCT) to generate awareness concerning the student-teacher relationship and the impact this relationship has on Appalachian students' learning and writing processes. By collecting data via one-on-one interviews with select Appalachian students from a rural university in western North Carolina, I showcase how my participants understand themselves as writers, students, and Appalachians. By using Carol Gilligan's listening guide methodology, I analyze each participant's word choices, expressions, and stories. Throughout my analysis, I call attention to the various cultural values participants use to guide their experiences in the writing classroom. In particular, by analyzing the voices of pride and individualism, I am able to showcase how some Appalachian students are working with their cultural values to navigate their college experience and create a bridge between their newfound academic identity and their Appalachian identity. Along with bringing attention to how my student-participants rely on their Appalachian knowledge and values in the writing classroom, I also explore the RCT concept of growth-fostering connection, arguing that a relationship between Appalachian students and their writing teacher—characterized by connection, compassion, and mutuality—can lead Appalachian students to an awareness and appreciation of their cultural expressions and practices. That is, I show how a growth-fostering relationship in the composition classroom can empower Appalachian students and encourage t (open full item for complete abstract)

M.A. (Master of Arts in English), Ohio Dominican University, 2024, English

While Wright is not a traditional Northern Appalachian Storyteller, his poetry does incorporate a number of the elements that are part of this tradition, such as his use of mythology, the role of women, the landscape, and Appalachia's connection to the outer world. This work explores the role of Appalachia, in particular Martins Ferry, Ohio, on the poetry of James Wright.

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2023, English (Arts and Sciences)

Despite the ways in which Appalachia's complexity has been overshadowed by the narrowness of many of prominent stereotypes about the region that have been portrayed in popular fiction, many Appalachian writers, most significantly Appalachian women writers, are producing narratives that push back against limiting conceptions of the region. Two such novels, Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver and Strange as This Weather Has Been by Ann Pancake, provide narratives that resist these hierarchal structures by presenting women characters and environments that challenge them. Through ecological feminist analysis of these texts, both of these novels are situated within a larger context of Appalachian-set work by women writers that have advanced feminism, providing opportunities for women to find moments of hope, peace, and agency despite capitalistic environmental violence, restrictive gender norms, and living in a traditionally patriarchal culture. Both of these pieces, in various ways, compare the subjugation of women and environmental violence as well as depict women as overt challengers of frameworks of Western thought and idealism, including the division between the human and nonhuman, rigid gender roles, and patriarchal structures of power.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2021, Political Science

In discussing the intersection between business and politics, Robert Dahl claimed that there is "no dearth of important and even urgent questions." This dissertation tackles one such question: How do economic firm intervention in the development of the state influence modern outcomes? I argue that when institutions are in transition, firms and state actors both face uncertainty, and as a result, they enter an arrangement in which the state actor consistently provides the firm with public resources in return for patronage. I define this as state capture. Across my three papers, I find that when we focus on the role of firms in political development, there are widespread and long-term consequences for the state and local populations when the state is captured. Across all three of these papers, I explore these ramifications in Appalachia Kentucky. State capture is not a novel concept, but its usage is uneven and unclear, and there is no cohesive intellectual conversation. The first paper ameliorates this by taking this literature and synthesizing a concept from which we can derive clearer implications. I use Kentucky and the Appalachian coal region to explore this concept. I collect archival data to test one observable implication of the concept---lack of democratic commitment and non-competitive elections. I find the inverse of what I expect to observe, elections in Appalachia Kentucky, for the locally elected sheriff and tax commissioner are more competitive than my theory predicts. I discuss this finding considering my concept and argue that this represents a need for understanding how economic firms can influence political outcomes. The second paper applies the conceptualization of state capture more deeply to the case of Appalachia Kentucky, to create a model to better understand the region's persistent economic underdevelopment. I argue that compared to previous Appalachian development models, understanding the region's local politics as captured is empiric (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 2020, Environment and Natural Resources

Many Quercus-Carya forests in the eastern United States are experiencing compositional shifts due to the failure of the overstory species to regenerate, while mesophytic species, i.e., Acer rubrum, Acer saccharum, and Fagus grandifolia, increasingly dominate their regeneration layers. The Wayne National Forest (WNF) of southeastern Ohio is largely Quercus-Carya forest ecosystem types, although the sapling regeneration is often dominated by the aforementioned mesophytic species. Through the 2018 resampling of 98 permanent plots established on the Marietta Unit of the WNF in 1993, this research investigates changes in sapling species composition and abundance. Statistically significant changes were observed in seven of the species in the total sapling layer: Acer rubrum, Acer saccharum, Aesculus flava, Carya glabra, Cornus florida, Fagus grandifolia, and Hamamelis virginiana. Within the subcategory of small saplings (stems 0.1-5.0 cm DBH), the ten species that had statistically significant changes were Acer rubrum, Acer saccharum, Carpinus caroliniana, Carya glabra, Cornus florida, Fagus grandifolia, Hamamelis virginiana, Nyssa sylvatica, Prunus serotina, and Ulmus rubra. In the subcategory of large saplings (stems 5.0-10.0 cm DBH), there were two species that had statistically significant changes: Cornus florida and Fagus grandifolia. Overall, the mesophytic species Acer rubrum, Acer saccharum, and Fagus grandifolia continue to dominate the sapling layers of the sampled forests. Fagus grandifolia had significant differences in total saplings, as well as both small and large sapling subcategories. In all three classes, Fagus grandifolia increased in stems per hectare and relative density. In the total sapling and small sapling categories, Fagus grandifolia became the most abundant species. Acer rubrum and Acer saccharum had statistically significant changes in total and small sapling categories, where the stems per hectare and relative densities of both species decre (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2018, Dance Studies

“Ethnic and Racial Formation on the Concert Stage: A Comparative Analysis of Tap Dance and Appalachian Step Dance” is a revisionist project that explores the shared aesthetics and historical trajectories of these two percussive dance practices, which have ultimately developed into two distinct forms of dance. This dissertation investigates the choreographic and representational strategies choreographers use to transfer the histories and legacies of tap dance and Appalachian step dance to the stage, namely through a process I call concertization. In each analysis, I pay particular attention to representations of the complex ethnic and racial identities affiliated with each form and ways concertization highlights or obscures such affiliations. Additionally, I aim to understand the relationship between the practices of tap dance and Appalachian step dance and what I see as a contested idea of “America” as it is represented through choreography. My analyses suggest the migration of rhythm tap dance and Appalachian step dance from vernacular and social contexts to the concert stage is in tension with the ways these dance forms, as vernacular practices, also engage in the consolidation of ethnic and racial identities. As a result, concertized versions of tap dance and Appalachian step dance may inadvertently whitewash the racial projects of dancing in-situ in favor of presenting a unified vision of America. One strategy dance artists engage to disrupt whitewashed representational hegemony in concert dance contexts is to reassert the ethnic and racial affiliations of these dance forms specifically by making what I call their “dancestry” visible through their choreography and improvisation. To undertake this investigation, I employ parallel analytical frameworks, which enable me to address the physical movement legacies of the practices within their social, cultural, and historical contexts. Examining what I call aesthetic philosophies, localized values, and dancestry, (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1991, Graduate School

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2016, English

This dissertation analyzes the rhetorics of Appalachian civic organizations that make the argument “remaining” is a tenable option among discursive, material, and economic pressures to do otherwise. This dissertation analyzes “remaining” through a rhetorical frame to show how remaining is more than simply staying put—it requires active rhetorical intervention in civic contexts and attention to the circulation of rhetorical positions and content. Analyzing “remaining” as a cultural rhetoric enables us to identify a civic techne that can be used in Appalachia and other areas where rhetorics of remaining are (or could be) deployed. I identify and develop this new frame—rhetorics of remaining—through my year-and-a-half participatory research with two Appalachian civic organizations: Appalshop, a multi-media non-profit in eastern Kentucky; and the Urban Appalachian Community Coalition, a community advocacy group for Appalachian out-migrants and their descendants in Cincinnati, Ohio. I trace acts of rhetorical remaining through interviews, analyses of media productions and web spaces, and collaborating with these groups in developing rhetorical strategies and producing content. This dissertation contributes to ongoing scholarship of how culture shapes rhetorical practice in civic spaces and how questions of circulation shape our rhetorical decisions by examining the civic work heritage claims do for communities. I uncover three broad strategies used in rhetorical remaining: "keeping with" heritage as a civic art among oppressive or indifferent discourses; offering "inventional trajectories" that redirect media flows; and "slow circulation," a strategy for community advocacy oriented toward sustained change over the long haul. Through these strategies, rhetorics of remaining offer a rhetorical theory for social change for communities struggling to pull themselves out of economic decline, halt outmigration, and/or to maintain cultural identities outside of a homeland.

M.A. (Master of Arts in English), Ohio Dominican University, 2016, English

The sense of place in Appalachian literature has gone through a unique evolution, from its early role in the fiction of the region tied to stereotypes with the voice of the outsider over the insider's to the renaissance of poetry in the region in the late twentieth century where the Appalachian authors regained their place. This unique evolution in the sense of place provides an avenue for the literature of Appalachia to gain canonical leverage. Two West Virginia poets, Muriel Miller Dressler and Irene McKinney, exemplify this in their use of the sublime. Several poems for each author combine place and the sublime, particularly in their poems dealing with outsiders and the destruction of the mountains through coal mining. This dichotomy of place and its ties to nature hearken to the sublime and a redefining of this literary term of antiquity where humanity becomes the terror. An ideal starting point for considering Appalachian literature in the canon is to increase its use it within the Appalachian classroom.

MA, University of Cincinnati, 2007, Arts and Sciences : Anthropology

Prior research regarding the validity of the self-rated health question has presented data suggesting ethnicity is a barrier when comparing respondent understanding of the self-rated health question. If it can be shown that ethnic minority respondents have an unrecognized understanding of the self-rated health question that would hint at the subjective question being an unreliable measure of health for all ethnic populations. The Jacobson (2004) study was designed to explore this possibility, performing cognitive interviews with a sample (n=74) of diverse ethnic respondents. Respondents were asked the self-rated health question and cognitive questions probing their understanding of the SF-36 questionnaire. The investigation performed in this study was based off analysis of data collected in the 2004 study. This study analyzed responses to the self-rated health question and coded responses to three cognitive questions. Findings suggested ethnic minorities and non-minorities understand the self-rated health question in different manners.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2012, EDU Teaching and Learning

Abstract This paper centers on three adolescents from rural Appalachia who highlight the complex ways in which adolescents negotiate circulating dominant discourses regarding Appalachian identity. The data is drawn from a year-long critical ethnographic teacher-researcher study in a senior English class located within a rural Appalachian high school. The research objective was to investigate how the students and the teacher socially position themselves, others, the local Appalachian community and communities outside of the region through literacy and language practices in the context of the English class. Data analysis indicates that the adolescents in this study constructed local definitions and identity positionings that complicated the dominant discourses of what it means to be from Appalachia. Central to this work was their reflexive positioning as holding epistemic privilege to describe Appalachian communities and to critique non-Appalachian's assertion of authority in constructing Appalachia. Appalachian and Appalachian-heritage students' experiences with language marginalization and monitoring of peers' language variation were significant in defining insider and outsider positions. This study suggests that centering the literacy practices of the English classroom on affords an examination of local and dominant discourses of Appalachian identity supports adolescents' critical understanding of these available discourses, and their positioning relative to the discourses.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2011, Curriculum and Instruction Cultural Studies (Education)

This study examines education and development in Appalachia using environmental education as the theoretical basis. Despite over 50 years of public attention to the educational and developmental disparities in the Central Appalachian region, these disparities still exist. Thus, the investigation into a new paradigm seems appropriate (Eller, 2008). The overarching research question seeks to explore whether a sustainable Appalachian perspective can serve to anchor an educational and developmental system that meets the needs of the Appalachian people. This study adopted a naturalistic qualitative approach. Naturalistic inquiry studies real-world situations as they unfold naturally; it also lacks predetermined constraints on outcomes and is characterized by openness to whatever emerges (Patton, 1990; Lincoln & Guba, 1985). The main source of data was through interviews of seven participants through purposeful sampling of information rich individuals. The findings of the study show that the development of a sustainable economy in Appalachia could produce a more affluent and environmentally just life for the region's residents and represents a new paradigm. The findings point out that a sustainable economy in Appalachia must include an agricultural component and that food production and food security is tied to regional ideas of place and identity. Environmental education is seen as a foundation of this development. Finally, the development of a sustainable economy must come from the grassroots, and the development of a mechanism to tie together the constructs of economic empowerment, education, environmental, and ecological justice in a coherent and practical way. The study indicates that Environmental Education can be the mechanism that serves that purpose as it contains all those constructs. I would contend that Appalachia is not unique in this, but that all culture is based in place and that environmental education methods are apropos for education and development me (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2006, Geography (Arts and Sciences)

The desire to improve the historical disparities of Appalachia provoked the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) to construct the Appalachian Developmental Highway System (ADHS). The ADHS has brought about more efficient travel, greater accessibility, and the opportunity for economic growth. However, the purpose of the ADHS, to initiate economic sufficiency, has overshadowed the study of change on the region's landscape. The combination of remote sensing and GIS technologies supports a methodology for evaluating the spatial expression of growth or physical development along highway corridors. This study applies this methodology to explore land use/land cover change in reference to infrastructure investment along the Ohio portion of the ADHS (Corridor D/State Route 32 in southern Ohio). Landsat images from two time segments, 1976 and 2002, over a 26 year period, were chosen to represent the physical change that has taken place from the height of highway construction to the near-present. The results of this study reveal the pattern of change and the extent of urbanized development along this corridor.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2013, EDU Teaching and Learning

The purpose of this qualitative study is to explore whether fifth grade Appalachian students' (from an Appalachian region in southern Ohio) cultural awareness is heightened through Appalachian literature during Appalachian book club meetings. The following research questions are examined: Do students' literature responses reflect Jones' Appalachian values (to be delineated later)? What values do Appalachian students deem important in their lives? Does reading Appalachian literature increase the cultural awareness of students living in an Appalachian community? Can acknowledging one's Appalachian culture through regional literature build a positive self-image among fifth grade students in southern Ohio? This research analyzes the literature responses of fifth grade students and examines the responses for evidence of Jones' Appalachian values while measuring the cultural awareness of book club participants. The importance of this study stems from the limited research regarding the Appalachian culture and its relationship to Appalachian literature. Many studies have focused on students' responses to multicultural literature. However, the present study specifically examines Appalachian students who often have been overlooked in qualitative research. The study's intent is to explore whether or not students develop a connection with stories that replicate their way of life and values (Sims-Bishop, 1997). Eight, fifth grade students at Northern Elementary participated in an eight week long study. Participants met three times a week to discuss an Appalachian junior novel, Trail of the Hunter's Horn, by Billy C. Clark. Participants responded to the literature through discussions, journal entries, poems, cultural autobiographies, and dioramas of their favorite scenes from the book. In addition, other data was collected from a pre- and post-survey, individual interviews, and field observations. Analysis of the data reveals participants' responses did reflect (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 1969, Graduate School

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 1968, Graduate School

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2024, English (Arts and Sciences)

At the crossroads of Middle America and the Appalachian Mountains, there is a small town called Hallowed, West Virginia, where the veil between worlds thins. Over 123 years, many different people of this town realize that this place that should be their safe haven is a breeding ground of horrors, all while combating the typical worries of rural America.

MA, University of Cincinnati, 2023, Arts and Sciences: Communication

This qualitative study seeks to gain insight into the lived experiences of urban Appalachian women, shedding light on the intricate web of their intersectional identities and the strategies they employ to navigate the identity gaps they encounter. Through a series of 12 in-depth interviews, this research uncovers three important strategies that urban Appalachian women employ in communicating their multifaceted identities and responding to the challenges associated with them. The results found that urban Appalachian women utilize the following strategies when communicating their intersectional identities and responding to identity gaps they experience: (1) calibration of Appalachian Identity through standpoints, (2) (re)framing meaning through identity and (3) seeking connections and shaping relationships.