Module 1, Activity 2: Mapping Appalachia

In this activity, Dr. Dwight Billings from the Department of Sociology at the University of Kentucky, presents an interactive map exercise which will guide you through various historical definitions of the region as a geographical place and initiates a discussion about the stereotypes associated with the region.

Professor Billings’ interests include social inequality, Appalachian and regional studies, poverty, sociological theory, and the sociology of religion. Dr. Billings’ work appears in American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, Social Problems, Sociological Quarterly, Current Perspectives in Sociological Theory, the Annual Review of Sociology, the Journal of Appalachian Studies, and other journals. He is author of Planters and the Making of a “New South,” and The Road to Poverty: The Making of Wealth and Hardship in Appalachia (with Kathleen Blee). He is co-editor of Back Talk from an American Region: Confronting Appalachian Stereotypes and Appalachia in the Making: The Mountain South in the Nineteenth Century. He is a past president of the Appalachian Studies Association and recent past editor of The Journal of Appalachian Studies. Dr. Billings is currently at work on a book-length analysis of class and culture in the Appalachian Region.

Speaker profile is taken from the University of Kentucky website faculty profiles.

Instructions:

Step 1: Listen to a lecture by Dr. Dwight Billings on Appalachian boundaries and stereotypes. Note: Quicktime movie, 422MB, approx. 37 minutes.