Linda Spatig, co-director for the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Gender in Appalachia and professor of advanced educational studies, said social context issues have always been her specialty when it comes to education.
"My area of emphasis within education has always been social context issues," she said. "When I came here to take the job at Marshall and realized I was in a region called Appalachia, that became salient to my interest in social context generally. So instead of looking at things like gender, race, ethnicity, class relations, I began to look also at place and geography as an important part of context."
Spatig first got involved with the center after she started working on a project called the Appalachian Women's Leadership Project. About 10 years ago, a girls' resiliency program in Lincoln County contacted her to do some evaluation research to find out what the girls in the program really thought about it.
Spatig has taken her graduate students along with her to continue the research in Lincoln County. There, they observe what the girls do in the programs, interview them and collect poems and artwork the girls do that expresses their views about the program. Spatig and her students then write their findings and report them back to the organization. That research was presented at last spring's Drinko Symposium.
"In a way, it was a kind of applied research," she said. "Right now I'm working to put it together in a book form so that the story can get out a little more broadly."
Spatig also mentioned other projects going on in various departments on campus. In Marshall's psychology department, professors Marianna Footo-Linz and Pamela Mulder have been working on a project called "Women Moving Mountains" for a number of years, Spatig said. The professors and students have interviewed women in McDowell County and examined how they've responded to a series of floods that occurred there. Cicero Fain, assistant professor of African American history, has been working on a dissertation on the black community in Huntington during 1870-1930. Katherine Rodier, professor of English, also is doing a research on the life of Carter G. Woodson's sister.
A unique position
Kevin Barksdale, assistant professor of American history and a specialist in Appalachian history, is just another one of many professors at Marshall doing research on the Appalachian region. He said his interest lies in 18th century Appalachia and is currently working on a manuscript that examines Appalachia during that time period.
"What I'm trying to do is look at Appalachia as another kind of study called borderland studies," he said. "The way the Appalachian frontier's been depicted - it's been seen as this battleground between Indians who are trying to hold onto their land and communities and whites. What I'm really interested in is - and borderland studies allows you to do this - is to look at other kinds of ways that Indians and whites interacted on the frontier like interracial marriages, there's trade relationships, there's political relationships - all kinds of things that weren't hostile. It's far more complicated than just warfare. I'm trying to get some idea of the real nature of these connections."
Barksdale and several other faculty members have also been working on the Oral History of Appalachia Project, which consists of about 600 to 2,500 archived oral histories obtained through interviews with people from around the region.
"We're in the process of making those available through the archives," he said. "I think we're going to digitize them. A lot of oral history projects you can go online and listen to the interviews. We may do that at some point."
Barksdale said Marshall University has an advantage that other schools may not have - its location and dedication of the faculty.
"Marshall University is uniquely positioned to be a leader in Appalachian studies because West Virginia University really hasn't embraced it," he said. "There's a stigma to having an Appalachian studies program. At Marshall, we've got the resources and a tremendous amount of faculty. We could become West Virginia's one-stop-shop for Appalachian studies. All the pieces are here."
The Glenwood Project
The Glenwood Project, now owned and maintained by the Marshall University Graduate College Foundation, aims to engage the public in the historical analysis of the Glenwood Estate, according to the project Web site.
The estate is an antebellum mansion built in 1852 that housed three prominent families from Kanawha County - the Laidleys, Summerses and Quarriers. The house was built on an estate with 366 acres extending from Delaware Avenue, Somerset Drive and the Chandler Branch of Edgewood Hills to the bottomland of the Kanawha River in West Charleston, according to the Web site.
Robert Maslowski, professor of archaeology and anthropology in the Graduate Humanities Program at the Marshall University Graduate College in South Charleston, said the initial research on the project just concluded at the Glenwood Symposium during the summer.
He said he plans to apply for more grants in December to help develop a Web site so others can access archival material from the project. A series of documentary films for public television could also come from the project, he said.
Researchers have been able to uncover some interesting data at the estate, Maslowski said.
"One of our historians was able to trace the emancipation of one of the Glenwood slaves and connect his genealogy to current residents in Charleston," he said. "He will be applying for a fellowship to continue his work on slavery in the Kanawha Valley."
Maslowski said he plans to present a series of papers on landscape archeology and the transition from agriculture to urbanism in Appalachia. He also wants to get students involved with all aspects of research and give them an opportunity to publish their findings.
"At the present, we are looking for students who want to be involved in the Glenwood Project," he said. "This is a truly multi-disciplinary project that can involve local and national history, archaeology, the craft movement in Appalachia, art, photography, graphic design and documentary filmmaking. What I would really like is a couple of students with a good GIS background to begin documenting and interpreting the changes in the Glenwood landscape. This would involve deed research, historic maps and modern aerial photography."
For more information on the Glenwood Project, contact Maslowski at maslowski@marshall.edu.
Kristina Murrill can be contacted at murrill1@marshall.edu.
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