Appalachian Figures Series – The Story of Ethel de Long Zande of Harlan, Kentucky On winter evenings at Pine Mountain Settlement School, the lights in the Chapel still dim for the Nativity Play. Students and neighbors move quietly into place, scripture and carols weave together, and for an hour the Harlan County hills hold a story that has been told in the same clear mountain cadence for more than a century.

Appalachian History Series – Smithville’s Dark Afternoon: The 2011 EF5 Tornado in Appalachian Mississippi On the afternoon of April 27, 2011, a violent tornado dropped out of the clouds over a small Appalachian town on the Tennessee Tombigbee Waterway and turned a mile wide swath of Smithville, Mississippi into shattered foundations, stripped trees, and twisted metal.

Appalachian History Series – “Bloody Madison”: The Shelton Laurel Massacre and a Divided North Carolina Mountain County High on the ridges above the French Broad River, the road into Shelton Laurel still feels like a place that time would rather forget. The pavement narrows, the houses thin out, and the holler closes in until there are more trees than mailboxes and more old stories than street signs.

Appalachian History Series – Miners and Convicts in the Coal Creek Valley: The Coal Creek War of 1891 to 1892 Where Coal Creek cuts a narrow path between Walden Ridge and Vowell Mountain in Anderson County, Tennessee, the valley looks quiet. Houses and churches cling to the slopes, freight trains still follow the creek, and most travelers think of Rocky Top as a song title or a highway exit.

Appalachian History Series – Letters from the Fraterville Mine: The 1902 Explosion in Anderson County, Tennessee If you follow the narrow road up Coal Creek Valley in Anderson County, Tennessee, the ridges close in around you. To the east rises Walden Ridge, to the west Vowell Mountain.

Appalachian History Series – Coalfield Classrooms: The Kanawha County Textbook War and the Rise of the Culture Wars In the late summer of 1974, a school board meeting in Charleston turned into one of the most intense curriculum battles in American history. The fight began over a stack of language arts textbooks meant to bring multicultural voices into Kanawha County classrooms.

A pivotal moment in my academic career, or at least one I remember clearly, was when a very senior professor in the US sent me his book proposal for an academic book/monograph on the author Thomas Pynchon. The other thing he included was a crossed off list of all the presses he had courted with the proposal and with whom he had not succeeded.

Appalachian History Series – The Monongah Mine Disaster of 1907: Coal, Immigrants, and the Worst Day in American Mining On a cold Friday morning in early December 1907, the town of Monongah in Marion County, West Virginia, woke to a sound that people later said could be heard for miles along the West Fork River.

Appalachian History Series – Tupelo’s Dark Sunday: The 1936 Tornado and the Making of Modern Appalachian Mississippi On a warm Palm Sunday evening in April 1936, the people of Tupelo, Mississippi settled into the usual routines of a small hill country town. Families finished supper, children were put to bed, and the lights of north Tupelo glowed around a shallow body of water locals called Gum Pond. Within a few minutes that quiet vanished.

Appalachian History Series – Hawks Nest Tunnel Disaster: Silica, Silence, and Memory in the New River Gorge If you stand at the overlook near Hawks Nest State Park in Fayette County, West Virginia, the New River looks calm and distant. Freight trains slide along the riverbank, and tourists lean on the stone wall to photograph the gorge.

Appalachian History Series – Walking the Hill: The Clinton Twelve and Appalachian Tennessee’s First Integrated High School A Mountain Town Drawn Into a National Story On the map, Clinton looks like one more small town in the ridge country north of Knoxville. The courthouse square sits above the Clinch River, with the Cumberland Plateau rising in long, timbered ridges to the west and the Great Smoky foothills not far to the east.