A Historiographic Account of Stereotypes, Ideology, and Education in an Appalachian Region

Abstract

Abstract Narratives of Appalachia's difference (like deficiencies or lack) began to circulate heavily after the Civil War. Despite images of illiterate, violent folks living in primitive cabins and feuding with rival families, mountain counties across southwest Virginia instituted public schooling. In this article, I examine texts that describe early schooling in southwest Virginia. Using grounded coding, I interrogate the ways in which Appalachia was rhetorically structured in fiction (specifically in John Fox, Jr.’s 1908 novel The Trail of the Lonesome Pine) as compared to personal accounts. This project creates a historiographic account of education in the mountains of Virginia by comparing stories told about the region to stories told from within the region. The stories told by both the authors from the region and the authors outside of the region engage in a shared ideological discourse on what Appalachia is and should be. The texts that I examine here respond to typical stereotypes of Appalachia.