Degree Name
MA (Master of Arts)
Program
English
Date of Award
5-2016
Committee Chair or Co-Chairs
Thomas Alan Holmes
Committee Members
Micheal Cody, Daniel Westover
Abstract
The Appalachian studies tradition ascertains that Appalachian people politically, socially, and academically represent a heterogeneous minority group of our own. In post-capitalistic America, however, the Appalachian region serves as a hotspot for media misrepresentation and tourism that perpetuate through works of fiction, nonfiction, and scholarship both negative and positive stereotypes in the overall American consciousness. Twenty-first-century Appalachian authors, I contend, are reinventing Appalachia from its postmodern rubble through fictionalized reconceptualizations of our region’s history, shifts in our collective consciousness from anthropocentric to ecocentric, and subversions of the heteronormative discourse of our internal colony through explorations of the psychosexual. The contemporary Appalachian texts that exemplify these abilities are Ron Rash’s The Cove, Barbara Kingsolver’s Prodigal Summer and Jeff Mann’s Loving Mountains, Loving Men because each represents a paradigm shift within their own aesthetic metanarratives in Appalachian literary history.
Document Type
Thesis - unrestricted
Recommended Citation
Solomon, Kelsey Alannah, "New Appalachians of the Twenty-First Century: Reinventing Metanarratives and Master-Images of Southern Appalachian Literature" (2016). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 3022. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/3022
Copyright
Copyright by the authors.
Included in
American Literature Commons, Appalachian Studies Commons, Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons