In addition to the research findings of the CSEGA Rockefeller Scholars, a variety of other individuals have presented their works for the conference.
The Status of Women in West Virginia Report: What Did We Learn? What Do We Do Now?
Bios:
Joan Browning is a free-lance writer on a mountain in West Virginia, where she expresses the values that brought her to the Civil Rights Movement as a citizen and “villager” supporting quality of life initiatives, children’s programs, and libraries. She is also a part time development consultant to the Greenbrier Community College Foundation. She lectures and writes about the civil rights movement, including her role in the movement, and is involved in a wide variety of community activities in southern West Virginia. She is also a member of the West Virginia Human Rights Commission.
Barb Howe is director of the WVU Center for Women’s Studies. She teaches American women’s history and focuses her research on West Virginia women’s history. She has presented her research at a wide variety of conferences related to women’s history and Appalachian studies. She has been involved in many public programs related to women’s history and is secretary of the Community Coalition for Social Justice in Morgantown.
Abstract:
This paper will focus on the Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR) Status of Women in West Virginia report. Barb Howe and Joan Browning co-chaired the advisory committee of volunteers, educators, and professionals dealing with women's issues in the state. We expect the report, including its policy recommendations, will be used as a reference text in classrooms, by researchers, and most significantly, by policymakers and advocates to support public policies promoting women's equality and their full participation in society.
The Status of Women in West Virginia Report: What Did We Learn? What Do We Do Now?
View All Discussions
Gender-Mediated Conditions of Student Aspirations as Reported by Rural and Town Appalachian Early Adolescents
Bios:
Nancy M. Wilson EdD -
Professor of Elementary and Secondary Education, Marshall University Graduate College, Marshall University. Dr. Wilson has taught math at the high school and college levels and currently teaches educational research and middle school mathematics education.
Robert A. Wilson, PhD -
Professor of Psychology and Industrial Relations, Marshall University Graduate College, Marshall University. Dr. Wilson teaches advanced behavioral statistics and is a licensed psychologist.
Stephen L. O'Keefe, PhD -
Professor of Psychology, Marshall University Graduate College, Marshall University. Dr. O'Keefe teaches advanced psychology and school psychology courses, and is a licensed clinical psychologist and a licensed and certified school psychologist.
Kimberly S. Cowley, MA -
Research and Evaluation Specialist in the Evaluation Unit of AEL. Ms. Cowley is responsible for conceptualizing and conducting applied research and evaluation projects and has authored more than 35 technical reports and papers.
Abstract:
This factor analytic study of student aspirations in Appalachian early adolescents was derived from 3,240 seventh grade students involved in two West Virginia GEAR UP projects in 2001. Analyses were conducted on a survey created by AEL based, in part, on conditions the University of Maine had identified as supporting high aspirations in youth.1 These conditions are belonging, heroes, sense of accomplishment, fun and excitement, spirit of adventure, curiosity and creativity, leadership and responsibility, and confidence to take action.
Gender-Mediated Conditions of Student Aspirations as Reported by Rural and Town Appalachian Early Adolescents
View All Discussions
Gay and Appalachian: The Shaky High Wire Between Subcultures
Bio:
Jeff Mann grew up in Covington, Virginia, and Hinton, West Virginia, receiving degrees in English and forestry from West Virginia University. His fiction, poetry and essays have appeared in many publications. He has published three award-winning poetry chapbooks: Bliss (Brickhouse Books, 1998), Mountain Fireflies (Poetic Matrix Press, 2000), and Flint Shards from Sussex (Gival Press, 2000). Forthcoming are a full-length collection of poetry, Bones Washed with Wine, from Gival Press; a collection of essays, Edge, from Haworth Press; and a novella in the anthology Masters of Midnight, from Kensington Books. At present he lives in Charleston, West Virginia, and Blacksburg, Virginia, where he teaches Appalachian Studies, creative writing, and literature at Virginia Tech.
Abstract:
Jeff Mann, noted Appalachian poet and writer, will provide narrative and poetry to examine the struggles gay Appalachian men face attempting to balance gay love with Southern and Appalachian regional tradition, as well as the constraints a gay couple faces when their public affection might provoke danger in a homophobic region. Mann's selected poems attempt to locate gay relationships within the larger Appalachian contexts of attachment to land and to family and to discuss the way in which Appalachian gay men remain, in some ways, perpetual outsiders.
Gay and Appalachian: The Shaky High Wire Between Subcultures
View All Discussions
Gimme That Old-Time Religion!: Gender and the May-November Homecoming Season
Bio:
Dr. Karen Li Simpkins, a CSEGA Advisory Board Member, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at MU. She graduated with a B.A. from the American University of Beirut, an M.A. from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a PhD from the University of Edinburgh.
Abstract:
Southwestern West Virginia Cemetery Homecomings are family reunions in hillside graveyards with eastern orientations. These annual gatherings between May and November provide a setting for Sunday morning worship, Sunday Dinner following allowing for lots of visiting with the extended families in attendance. Begun in the nineteenth century, they are still prevalent in the twenty-first.
Gimme That Old-Time Religion!: Gender and the May-November Homecoming Season
View All Discussions
Appalachian Women's Stories of Migration from West Virginia to Northeast Ohio: A Narrative Analysis of Interviews and Personal Observations
Bio:
Linda Barr Capper was born in Tucker County, West Virginia in 1954. Along with millions of others, her family migrated out of the region they had lived in for hundreds of years in order for her father to work at a steel mill in northeastern Ohio. (She has been trying to right that wrong ever since.) She earned her master’s degree in Family and Consumer Studies at Kent University. She lives in Canton, Ohio, but intends on moving to Barbour County, WV, to live permanently as soon as she can work it out.
Abstract:
This is an exploratory study which sought to examine how women of Appalachian heritage, now living in northeast Ohio, perceived their “life story” within the context of their cultural and ethnic backgrounds. The study was concerned with discovering subjective beliefs and meanings about being from Appalachia, specifically West Virginia.
Appalachian Women's Stories of Migration from West Virginia to Northeast Ohio: A Narrative Analysis of Interviews and Personal Observations
View All Discussions
Expanding the Tradition: Resistance in Denise Giardina's Storming Heaven and The Unquiet Earth and Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer
Bio:
Patti Capel Swartz is an Assistant Professor of English at Kent State University East Liverpool. Research and publication interests include issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and ability. Swartz has published essays about the work of Barbara Kingsolver, the Harlem Renaissance, and gender issues. Much of her current work focuses on issues of race, class, gender and sexuality in Appalachia. Swartz recently scripted and directed Reading Our Past, a readers theatre production based on local histories collected in composition classrooms.
Abstract:
Denise Giardina’s Storming Heaven and The Unquiet Earth and Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer, novels set in Appalachia, continue a long tradition of resistance to exploitation of the people and the environment of the areas in which they are set. Both Giardina and Kingsolver are aware of the interconnectedness of all life, the dependence of species on the “inanimate” world, and the need, through the emotion that is transmitted through fiction writing, to bring these concerns alive for readers through characters that readers are able to care about.
Expanding the Tradition: Resistance in Denise Giardina's Storming Heaven and The Unquiet Earth and Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer
View All Discussions
War Report from Black Oak Ridge to Marshall University
Bio:
Yarnell Perkins (call her Nell) is a sometimes poet and essayist and an unemployed journalist, now working as a legal secretary.
Abstract:
No Tellico Surprise is a poem about the last demonstration against the Tellico Dam, the "Halloween before they shut the gates forever." It describes all the people who were there protesting against the dam and all the reasons they had for protesting (that is, not just snail darters!) It is about taking a dare and failing, about resisting evil, and about how "I still don't know the statute of limitations on river conspiracies."
War Report from Black Oak Ridge to Marshall University
View All Discussions
View Dr. Jennings Scholar Page
"Eulogy for Davy Crocket" and other poetry by Rachel Jennings
View All Discussions
Hillbilly Headlines: Women & Minorities in the Media
Online Chat Session Host
Bio:
Sharon Brescoach, a CSEGA Advisory Board Member, is an assistant professor in the W. Page Pitt School of Journalism and Mass Communications at MU. She graduated with M.A.'s from both WVU and Marshall, and she is currently completing her doctoral dissertation at the University of Kentucky.
Chat Discussion Abstract:
Did you know that NBC's Jodi Applegate is a Wheeling, WV native? Or that Washington correspondent Helen Thomas was born in Winchester, KY? Or that media critic and scholar bell hooks is from Kentucky? The hillbilly stereotype is well established in all media, but we never seem to hear about the successes of Appalachians in the media. Based on research gathered with her Mass Media of Appalachia class, Brescoach's session will discuss these famous women and minorities in the media from the region as well as discussions of the images we all love to hate.
Chat Session not available
View All Discussions
Going Down the Path Not Taken: Appalachinan Women and the Journey that Led Them to Higher Education
Online Chat Session Host
Chat Session Not Available
View All Discussions
Please note: presentations are in PDF format and may be quite large in size -- depending on your connection speed these may take several minutes to download.
