The Power of Place: Land and People in Appalachia

FAIN: ES-231209-15

James Agee Film Project (Charlottesville, VA 22902-4657)
Jamie Simpson Ross (Project Director: February 2015 to May 2017)

A two-week institute for thirty school teachers on southern Appalachian history and culture.

The Power of Place: Land and Peoples in Appalachia, a two-week institute, will be held at the University of North Carolina Asheville in 2016 from July 10 to July 22 and will host thirty K-12 educators from across the country. The institute is sponsored by the James Agee Film Project, an award winning educational media non-profit in East Tennessee, and producers of the NEH funded PBS series APPALACHIA: A History of Mountains and People. Using the Southern Appalachians as a case study, The Power of Place will use insights from environmental history to examine the role of landscape in the shaping of culture and history. The Power of Place will address these major humanities themes: 1) how the Appalachian mountains have shaped the people of the region and in turn how humans have shaped the mountains 2) how the story of Appalachia--including its land, peoples, and resources--relates to the larger American story and 3) the role cultural and biological diversity have played in the region