Meaningful understanding requires involvement with a community and willingness to push past cultural boundaries.

Why Appalachian  Studies at Sewanee?

Sewanee is more than a college town. The University of the South is situated on an Appalachian plateau that includes vibrant communities outside the gates. The minor in Southern Appalachian studies brings together the efforts of faculty, staff, students, and community partners toward building a transformative education in the region's past, present, and future. It is fundamentally grounded in the Southern highlands and devoted to exploring the factors that have shaped life and imagination here, the trends that continue to mark the area, and prospects that will influence Appalachian identity and development in the years to come.

In this minor, you'll be able to focus on a specific issue in Appalachia or explore a variety of general trends in the region. And you'll gain insights from individuals committed to helping you better understand the region, its people, their challenges, and the rich heritage of the highlands.

Domain Discoveries

By John C. Willis

If he’s not in the classroom, in the University Archives, or at home, it’s likely that History Professor John Willis is in the woods. That’s where, for the last several years, he has spent countless hours, hiking trails and bushwhacking off-trail, in summer heat and winter ice, to research an environmental and social history of the South Cumberland Plateau. Unlike many historians, Willis conducts much of his research outside, with his eyes and his feet, trekking to seldom-visited tracts on and off the Domain to search for evidence of long-forgotten human activity. Willis reads the landscape like a ship’s captain reads the sea, like a rabbinical scholar reads the Torah—scanning for subtle variations in vegetation and telltale signs in the dirt. All that sweat and squinting has paid off with one discovery after another, giving the lie to the notion that these forests are largely untouched by human hands.

Here, Willis offers his take on five sites along Sewanee’s Perimeter Trail that you, too, can find, if you just look hard enough.

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A Sampling of Courses

Place, Memory, and Identity
Southern Appalachian Studies

This course explores critical intersections of memory, identity, and place from a multidisciplinary perspective. Students engage a series of concepts and skills regarding place—abstractly and concretely—as they relate to efforts by individuals, communities, and societies to gain meaning from the past for the present.

SAST 220
Food, Agriculture, and Social Justice in Southern Appalachia and Beyond
Southern Appalachian Studies

This course explores how producing, preparing, and consuming meals become expressions of individuality, social unity, and cultural identity. Current systems of food production are examined with specific consideration given to the ways in which differential production and access to food have created disparities in health and nutrition as well as how the Food Justice movement seeks to address these inequities.

SAST 325
Southern Cultures
Anthropology

An anthropological study of the southern United States emphasizes cultural continuity in both mountains and lowlands. The course uses community studies and literature to explore how indigenous interpretations fit within and react against national patterns and how locality, race, status, and gender act as social principles.

ANTH 302
"Ramblin' Blues": The Back Roads of Southern Music
MUSIC

The "roots" music of the Southeastern United States has been one of the region's chief exports. Musicians wander back roads, crowd front porches and church pews, and sometimes make their way to music centers like Nashville, New Orleans, and Memphis. This course focuses on musicians in the Southern tradition and addresses diverse idioms, especially the blues (folk, country, electric) and Sacred Harp singing. Students become knowledgeable in interpreting lyrics and in deploying terminology for music analysis, including mode, meter, harmony, and form.

MUSC 141
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Southern Appalachian Studies

Programs of Study & Related Programs

Requirements for the Minor in Southern Appalachian Studies

Requirements for the Minor in Environmental Studies | Website

Meet some professors

Daniel Carter
dccarter@sewanee.edu

Daniel Carter was born, raised, and currently lives on a cattle and sheep farm in the Sewanee area and has a passion for land conservation. He spent several years prior to his current academic service as a county government consultant with the University of Tennessee’s County Technical Assistance Service, working with rural local elected officials in Tennessee. Carter is currently the President of the Tennessee River Gorge Trust, a land trust responsible for protecting approximately 17,000 acres in the scenic and biologically diverse Tennessee River Gorge. His research involves analyzing the cultural, financial, and environmental impacts of land-use change in the South Cumberland Plateau as timber companies have divested thousands of acres for development purposes in recent years.

Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies
Celeste Ray
cray@sewanee.edu

R. Celeste Ray trained in cultural anthropology, ecological anthropology and archaeology, and her teaching and research remains focused on these subfields. Her publications have considered regionalism, cultural Creolization, ethnic identities, and the meaning of heritage. Professor Ray’s current research considers holy wells and sacred landscapes in Ireland and folklore about healing springs on the Cumberland Plateau.

Professor of Environmental Arts and Humanities & Anthropology
Paige Schneider
paige.l.schneider@sewanee.edu

Paige Schneider teaches courses in the subfields of gender and politics, political sociology, and women, gender, and sexuality studies. A founding member of the College’s community engaged learning program, and the intergroup dialogue program, she teaches a course on race and class. Schneider’s earlier research examines cultural politics and the institutionalization of social movements in political parties. Her current research in the area of domestic politics considers barriers to college access and persistence to graduation among rural youth.

Assistant Professor of Politics and Women's and Gender Studies
Bran Potter
bpotter@sewanee.edu

Professor of Geology, Bran Potter earned a Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts. His areas of expertise include structural geology, tectonics, and sedimentology.

Professor of Geology
Karen Yu
kyu@sewanee.edu

Karen Yu teaches courses in cognitive psychology including a seminar on decision-making, her current research focus. She is particularly interested in the factors influencing perceived options in decision-making contexts and in the influence of framing on judgments and decisions. Over the years, she has worked with Sewanee students on a range of research projects shaped by their interests and questions. These include studies examining academic dishonesty from a decision-making perspective, college students’ conceptualizations of mental health and mental illness, and much more.

Professor of Psychology

Contact

John C. Willis
Professor of History and Chair of Southern Appalachian Studies

jwillis@sewanee.edu

Walsh-Ellett 201, Ext.1534

You might be interested in

The University Farm
Where Growth Happens

The University Farm seeks to give you a transformative experience through the immersive and intimate practice of restorative agriculture. The Farm offers opportunities to enhance your education and connect with the history of agriculture—especially how these ideas affect the plateau. And if you’re lucky, there will be some baby goats around during finals.

Yes, I love baby goats
The Roberson Project
on Slavery, race, and reconciliation

The Roberson Project on Slavery, Race, and Reconciliation at the University of the South is a six-year initiative investigating the university’s historical entanglements with slavery and slavery’s legacies. Our Project’s name memorializes the late Professor of History, Houston Bryan Roberson, who was the first tenured African American faculty member at Sewanee and the first to make African American history and culture the focus of their teaching and scholarship.

Join Us
University Archives
Fine arts, manuscripts, historic documents & more

University Archives serves as the official repository for the records of the University of the South. The Archives document the University's decision- making processes, culture, policies, events, employees, and alumni. The retention, preservation, and accessibility of these materials support the University’s commitment to instruction, research, and community service.

Learn More