Research Guides: Appalachian Cultures and Environments: Home

VT Appalachian Cultures and Environments and the University Library

Appalachian Cultures and Environments is a Pathways minor in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences and the Department of Religion and Culture.

Per their webpage: "Students explore questions of equity, identity, race and ethnicity, and resource extraction, and are invited to take action, informed by scholarship, to improve the well-being of people, communities, and ecosystems....[They will] gain an understanding of the places, cultures, histories, artistic expressions, ecologies, and politics of the Appalachian region, historically and currently"

This guide provides a collection of recommended resources for Appalachian Cultures and Environments research such as databases, journals, books, articles, and so on. The recommendations are not comprehensive, but these resources are very likely to contain materials useful for your projects.

A few recommended online resources outside Virginia Tech

Accessible Appalachia
An Open-Access Introduction to Appalachian Studies is an edited collection of original scholarship. The textbook offers an interdisciplinary perspective and is ideal for introductory classes in Appalachian Studies. Available free to students everywhere, this textbook features coverage of Appalachian artistic, cultural, historical, natural, and social development.
W. L. Eury Appalachian Collection
The W. L. Eury Appalachian Collection is a comprehensive, multidisciplinary collection with special strengths in folklore, ethnography, music, religion, history, genealogy, literature, cookery, and African and Native Appalachia. It includes books (both circulating and rare), periodical subscriptions, sound recordings, maps, oral histories, moving images, photographs, ephemera, artifacts, and manuscript material concerning the Appalachian Region.

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The Appalachian Regional Commission defines the Appalachian Region as a "250,000-square-mile region that follows the spine of the Appalachian Mountains from southern New York to northern Mississippi."
Digital Library of Appalachia
The Digital Library of Appalachia provides online access to archival and historical materials related to the culture of the southern and central Appalachian region. The contents of the DLA are drawn from special collections of Appalachian College Association member libraries.