Language, Ecology and Cartographic Boundaries: Globalizing Our Vision of Appalachia

• Main Authors: Freund, Hugo A., Olson, Ted, Isaacs, Susan
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: Marshall Digital Scholar 2014
• Subjects: environmental_ecological; natural_sciences; social_sciences; literature_poetry; Canada; Alabama; Newfoundland
• Online Access: https://mds.marshall.edu/asa_conference/2014/Full/110

Through language, ecology, and looking beyond the cartographic boundaries that establish Appalachia, three panelists will discuss how Appalachia is part of a larger global system. Based on fieldwork and research, Hugo Freund will locate the Appalachian Mountains in a broad global context – particularly Canada. Despite cartographic boundaries, economic and social continuities link this large physiographic region stretching from Newfoundland to northern Alabama. Maps will illustrate the need for a more holistic view of Appalachia. As a former director ETSU's Appalachian, Scottish, Irish Studies Program, and as a Fulbright scholar in Spain, Ted Olson concludes that the most pressing problems within the Appalachian region involve lessons drawn from global perspectives. He is also a teacher and researcher of Appalachian Studies. This experience suggests highlighting language in understanding Appalachia. Personal experiences and case studies of other teacher-researchers will enhance the argument. Drawing inter-disciplinarily from anthropologist Gregory Bateson’s Steps to an Ecology of Mind and Barbara Kingsolver’s work, Susan Isaacs will emphasize the Appalachian biosphere in a transnational context. Even as the ARC has expanded the US government’s definition of the region, we need to think ecologically and holistically about Appalachia. Appalachia is the biological seedbed for North America, and is an integral piece in the larger biosphere. Bateson wrote, “We are not outside the ecology for which we plan—we are always and inevitably a part of it.” These themes emerge in Kingsolver’s novel Flight Behavior, as well as in memoir of living about a year of living sustainably, Animal, Vegetable, Mineral.