Proving Ground

Expertise and Appalachian Landscapes
Erscheinungsjahr 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4214-2539-9
Verlag: Johns Hopkins University Press

Buch, Englisch, 232 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 236 mm, Gewicht: 435 g

Disrupting the intervenor narrative in Appalachian studies.

The Appalachian Mountains attracted an endless stream of visitors in the twentieth century, each bearing visions of what they would encounter. Well before large numbers of tourists took to the mountains in the latter half of the century, however, networks of missionaries, sociologists, folklorists, doctors, artists, and conservationists made Appalachia their primary site for fieldwork. In Proving Ground, Edward Slavishak studies several of these interlopers to show that the travelers’ tales were the foundation of powerful forms of insider knowledge.

Following four individuals and one cohort as they climbed professional ladders via the Appalachian Mountains, Slavishak argues that these visitors represented occupational and recreational groups that used Appalachia to gain precious expertise. Time spent in the mountains, in the guise of work (or play that mimicked work), distinguished travelers as master problem-solvers and transformed Appalachia into a proving ground for preservationists, planners, hikers, anthropologists, and photographers.

Based on archival materials from outdoors clubs, trade journals, field notes, correspondence, National Park Service records, civic promotional materials, and photographs, Proving Ground presents mountain landscapes as a fluid combination of embodied sensation, narrative fantasy, and class privilege. Touching on critical regionalism and mobility studies, this book is a boundary-pushing cultural history of expertise, an environmental history of the Appalachian Mountains, and a historical geography of spaces and places in the twentieth century.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Slavishak, Edward

Fachgebiete

• Geowissenschaften Geographie | Raumplanung Geographie: Allgemeines, Karten & Atlanten
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Expert Vision
2. Terrestrial and Human
3. The Stern Grip of Circumstance
4. A Priceless Asset
5. William Gedney and the Look of Coal Country
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Slavishak, Edward
Edward Slavishak is an associate professor of history at Susquehanna University. He is the author of Bodies of Work: Civic Display and Labor in Industrial Pittsburgh.