Appalachia is a cultural region in the Eastern United States that stretches from the Southern Tier of New York State to northern Alabama and Georgia. While the Appalachian Mountains stretch from Belle Isle in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, to Cheaha Mountain in Alabama, Appalachia typically refers only to the cultural region of the central and southern portions of the range, from the Catskill Mountains of New York southwest to the Blue Ridge Mountains which run southwest from southern Pennsylvania to northern Georgia, and the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina. In 2020, the region was home to an estimated 26.1 million people, of whom roughly 80% are white.
The Great Smoky Mountains are a mountain range rising along the Tennessee–North Carolina border in the southeastern United States. They are a subrange of the Appalachian Mountains, and form part of the Blue Ridge Physiographic Province. The range is sometimes called the Smoky Mountains and the name is commonly shortened to the Smokies. The Great Smokies are best known as the home of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which protects most of the range. The park was established in 1934, and, with over 11 million visits per year, it is the most visited national park in the United States.
Appalachian English is American English native to the Appalachian mountain region of the Eastern United States. Historically, the term "Appalachian dialect" refers to a local English variety of southern Appalachia, also known as Smoky Mountain English or Southern Mountain English in American linguistics. This variety is both influential upon and influenced by the Southern U.S. regional dialect, which has become predominant in central and southern Appalachia today, while a Western Pennsylvania regional dialect has become predominant in northern Appalachia, according to the 2006 Atlas of North American English (ANAE). The ANAE identifies the "Inland South,” a dialect sub-region in which the Southern U.S. dialect's defining vowel shift is the most developed, as centering squarely in southern Appalachia: namely, the cities of Knoxville and Chattanooga, Tennessee; Birmingham and Huntsville, Alabama and Asheville, North Carolina. All Appalachian English is rhotic and characterized by distinct phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon. It is mostly oral but its features are also sometimes represented in literary works.
Appalachian music is the music of the region of Appalachia in the Eastern United States. Traditional Appalachian music is derived from various influences, including the ballads, hymns and fiddle music of the British Isles, the African music and blues of early African Americans, and to a lesser extent the music of Continental Europe.
The Museum of Appalachia, located in Norris, Tennessee, 20 miles (32 km) north of Knoxville, is a living history museum that interprets the pioneer and early 20th-century period of the Southern Appalachian region of the United States. Recently named an Affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution, the museum is a collection of more than 30 historic buildings rescued from neglect and decay and gathered onto 63 acres (250,000 m2) of picturesque pastures and fields. The museum also preserves and displays thousands of authentic relics, maintains one of the nation's largest folk art collections, and hosts performances of traditional Appalachian music and annual demonstrations by hundreds of regional craftsmen.
The Encyclopedia of Appalachia is the first encyclopedia dedicated to the region, people, culture, history, and geography of Appalachia. The Region, as defined by the Appalachian Regional Commission, is a 205,000-square-mile area that follows the spine of the Appalachian Mountains from southern New York to northern Mississippi. It includes all of West Virginia and parts of 12 other states: Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. Forty-two percent of this Region's population is rural, compared with 20 percent of the national population, but the region also includes urban areas, such as Pittsburgh and Chattanooga. The encyclopedia is 1,832 pages long and contains over 2,000 entries. Produced by the Center of Excellence for Appalachian Studies and Services at East Tennessee State University (ETSU), Rudy Abramson and Dr. Jean Haskell, are the two main editors of the encyclopedia. Jill Oxendine served as managing editor. The volume was published in March 2006 by the University of Tennessee Press. It includes a foreword by William Ferris, former chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities, who called the encyclopedia "truly a feast of information about its region. .. a remarkably detailed portrait of a landscape that runs from New York to Mississippi.” The volume also includes an appreciation by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University, who is a native of West Virginia. Gates wrote that the encyclopedia "lays out for everyone else what we who grew up there have always known. Appalachia is a rich and beautiful land steeped in tradition and open to change. It is home to countless storytellers and stories without end. Both its lushness and its rockiness teach us to make our way in the world, but Appalachia never leaves us."
Appalachian studies is the area studies field concerned with the Appalachian region of the United States.
In the Appalachian Mountains of the eastern United States, balds are mountain summits or crests covered primarily by thick vegetation of native grasses or shrubs occurring in areas where heavy forest growth would be expected.
Settlement schools are social reform institutions established in rural Appalachia in the early 20th century with the purpose of educating mountain children and improving their isolated rural communities.
Our Southern Highlanders: A Narrative of Adventure in the Southern Appalachians and a Study of Life Among the Mountaineers is a book written by American author Horace Kephart (1862–1931), first published in 1913 and revised in 1922. Inspired by the years Kephart spent among the inhabitants of the remote Hazel Creek region of the Great Smoky Mountains, the book provides one of the earliest realistic portrayals of life in the rural Appalachian Mountains and one of the first serious analyses of Appalachian culture. While modern historians and writers have criticized Our Southern Highlanders for focusing too much on sensationalistic aspects of mountain culture, the book was an important departure from the previous century's local color writings and their negative distortions of mountain people.
Emma Bell Miles was a writer, poet, and artist whose works capture the essence of the natural world and the culture of southern Appalachia.
The southern Appalachian spruce–fir forest is an ecoregion of the temperate coniferous forests biome, a type of montane coniferous forest that grows in the highest elevations in the southern Appalachian Mountains of the eastern United States.
W.K. McNeil was a prominent American folklorist, historian, record producer, and author specializing in Ozark and Appalachian mountain cultures.
Barry Aron Vann is an author, speaker and retired Dean of Behavioral and Social Sciences at Colorado Christian University. A prolific writer, Vann has published on a wide range of geographic topics. He is most noted for his work in environmental perceptions and religious geography, in particular themes in which religious beliefs are associated with forming environmental perceptions and politicized regions such as Northern Ireland and the American Bible Belt. Vann's work along the interface between religion and geography stresses the role of faith leaders in shaping the behaviours of others who in turn impact the cultural landscape. An excellent description of how Vann conjoins geotheology and leadership, or the lack thereof, is expressed by Andrew Nicholls in The Journal of British Studies: “Vann acknowledges that the early Stuart policy of plantation facilitated the emigration of Scots to Ireland, and for those who feared and loathed the religious policies of the regime, early seventeenth century Ulster [nine northern counties in Ireland] could stand as a land of refuge. But only for some. Scotland featured numerous socioeconomic challenges, and for some dissenters, rising rents, unproductive lands, and failed crops were evidence of punishment from an angry God. Therefore, migration became an opportunity to atone for one's sins as well, although individuals leaving Scotland owing to poverty could expect little sympathy from their religious leaders." His book Puritan Islam: The Geoexpansion of the Muslim World was chosen as a Top 25 Outstanding Academic Title for 2012 by Choice, a division of the American Library Association (ALA). A review in the April 2012 issue of Choice referred to Puritan Islam as "perhaps the best geographical text produced on this subject since 2000" and of "utmost significance in finally taking the topic away from the emotional to where it needs to be—rational and explanatory discussion." On her show Spirited Debate, Lauren Green of Fox News called Puritan Islam a "fascinating book."
Claude Howard Dorgan was an American academic best known for his research and writing on the topic of religion in Appalachia.
Jim Wayne Miller was an American poet and educator who had a major influence on literature in the Appalachian region.
Helen Matthews Lewis was an American sociologist, historian, and activist who specialized in Appalachia and women's rights. She was noted for developing an interpretation of Appalachia as an internal United States colony, as well as designing the first academic programs for Appalachian studies. She also specialized in Appalachian oral history, collecting and preserving the experiences of Appalachian working-class women in their own words. She is known as the "grandmother of Appalachian Studies" as her work has influenced a generation of scholars who focus on Appalachia.
Affrilachia is a term that focuses on the cultural contributions of African-American artists, writers, and musicians in the Appalachian region of the United States. The term "Affrilachia" is attributed to Kentucky-based writer Frank X Walker, who began using it in the 1990s as a way to negate the stereotype of Appalachian culture, which portrays Appalachians as predominantly white and living in small mountain communities. Walker could be said to have made this word global. The term Affrilachian stands for an African American who is a native or resident in the Appalachian region. Affrilachia is also the title of Walker's 2000 book of poetry, published by Old Cove Press.
The city of Baltimore, Maryland includes a significant Appalachian population. The Appalachian community has historically been centered in the neighborhoods of Hampden, Pigtown, Remington, Woodberry, Lower Charles Village, Highlandtown, and Druid Hill Park, as well as the Baltimore inner suburbs of Dundalk, Essex, and Middle River. The culture of Baltimore has been profoundly influenced by Appalachian culture, dialect, folk traditions, and music. People of Appalachian heritage may be of any race or religion. Most Appalachian people in Baltimore are white or African-American, though some are Native American or from other ethnic backgrounds. White Appalachian people in Baltimore are typically descendants of early English, Irish, Scottish, Scotch-Irish, and Welsh settlers. A migration of White Southerners from Appalachia occurred from the 1920s to the 1960s, alongside a large-scale migration of African-Americans from the Deep South and migration of Native Americans from the Southeast such as the Lumbee and the Cherokee. These out-migrations caused the heritage of Baltimore to be deeply influenced by Appalachian and Southern cultures.
Michael Ann Williams is an American Folklorist, recognised for her research into vernacular architecture, particularly in Appalachia.
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