With the success of podcasts like Serial and This American Life's S-Town, the calamity of J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy, and the dawning of "Trump's America" as a regional branding, Appalachia has once again found itself laid bare on the national stage. As the romanticization of Appalachia as poor, packing, and white persists, the question becomes: how can Appalachian peoples access these negative images as tools of resistance, reformation, and community making? How does an American gothic find home in Appalachian narratives? This project explores clashes between national othering and local othering in Appalachian identity making as a tangible production of an Appalachian grotesque, a grotesque constructed through the subversion of the modern American gothic as a critical model for exploring Appalachian identity, particularly nationally othered and queered identities. The scope of this project ranges from contemporary, such as the popular memoir Hillbilly Elegy (2016) and the record breaking podcast S-Town (2016), as well as Robert Gipe's debut novel, Trampoline (2015), and their historical counterparts: the 1967 documentary Holy Ghost People and the 1976 documentary Harlan County, U.S.A. Through the lens of contemporary gothic readings of identity that come to form the grotesque, a framework for deconstructing notions of Appalachian fatalism begins to emerge. By specifically looking at ideas of violence, whether economic, cultural, or physical, and theories of erasure through the lens of land distribution and acquisition in Appalachia and its effect on self and community identity built up in the anchoring texts, defining and cultivating an Appalachian grotesque allows for a quantifying of Appalachian persistence within a history of critical thought, for better or for worse, as a way of both critiquing and fortifying the identity of Appalachia. / Master of Arts / The narrative of Appalachia, as white, poor, uneducated, barefoot, etc. that defines conceptions of the grotesque in contemporary media, such as more classic movies like 1972’s Deliverance, the tale of four ‘city boys’ from Atlanta during a bloody trip through the mountains, most famous for its “Dueling Banjos” scene, or more recent movies such as 2017’s Logan Lucky, a heist movie centered around two brothers’ plot to rob a NASCAR race in North Carolina, interacts with concepts of American masculinity and femininity through two prominent categories: hunger and disgust. Through the literary positioning of the body as a site in which hunger and disgust interact/react, as well as the subsequent relationship between sex and desire as defining features of a productive, and reproductive body, southern gothic tropes are encapsulated and reimagined through a grotesque Appalachian lens. It is through this cyclical process of hunger and disgust, and sex, desire, and production, in the social, political, and economic spheres that an Appalachian notion of the grotesque is formed.

Inarguably a major recording act, Tennessee Ernie Ford (1919-1991) sold an estimated 90 million albums worldwide, and charted 17 Top Ten country singles and four Top Ten pop singles over a 35-year recording career. And he played significant - and pioneering - roles in radio and television broadcasting. All the secular-themed studio recordings from the first dozen years in the career of one of the most important crossover acts in the history of American popular music. Five CDs containing 154 tracks and a 120-page book with newly written essays, track-by-track album notes, a discography, label scans, and many rare photographs and illustrations. Early country hits including the chart-topping Mule Train (1949) and Ford's pioneering 'hillbilly boogie' smash The Shotgun Boogie (1950), as well as Ford's first major crossover hit, the 1950 duet (with Kay Starr) I'll Never Be Free. It also includes classics such as Rock City Boogie (with the Dinning Sisters, 1951) and Blackberry Boogie (1952) as well as overlooked delights as the train song Tennessee Local (1952), his 1952 interpretation of Willie Mabon's rhythm and blues hit I Don't Know. This boxed set includes two never-before-released songs (Slow Down and Small World), numerous Ford singles and album tracks not previously reissued on CD, and several rarities, including Ford's 1955 recitations of Davy Crockett tales, as well as Ford's 1958 public service jingles to promote the U. S. Marine Corps 'Toys for Tots' charitable program. / https://dc.etsu.edu/etsu_books/1150/thumbnail.jpg

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Thesis (M.S.)--University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 2004. / Title from title page screen (viewed Sept. 22, 2004). Thesis advisor: David Buehler. Document formatted into pages (xiv, 99 p. : ill. (some col.)). Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 50-66).

Theses (M.S.)--Marshall University, 2008. / Title from document title page. Includes abstract. Document formatted into pages: contains 34 p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 33-34)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Lehigh University, 1997. / Includes vita. Bibliography: leaves 163-175.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1972. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

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No other place in the world has a romance with American bluegrass like the Czech Republic. Banjo Romantika introduces the musicians who play this unique bluegrass hybrid. Czechs first heard bluegrass during World War II when the Armed Forces Network broadcast American music for soldiers. The music represented freedom to dissatisfied Czechs living in a communist state. Czechs’ love for the music was solidified when Pete Seeger visited and performed in 1964. Inspired by classic American bluegrass sounds, an assortment of musicians from across the formerly communist Czech Republic have melded the past, the political and the present into a lively musical tradition entirely its own.