Vols. 1-12 include proceedings of the 13th-24th annual Conference of southern mountain workers.

The industrial expansion of the twentieth century brought with it a profound shift away from traditional agricultural modes and practices in the American South. The forces of economic modernity—specialization, mechanization, and improved efficiency—swept through southern farm communities, leaving significant upheaval in their wake. In an attempt to comprehend the complexities of the present and prepare for the uncertainties of the future, many southern farmers searched for order and meaning in their memories of the past. In Southern Farmers and Their Stories, Melissa Walker explores the ways in which a diverse array of farmers remember and recount the past. The book tells the story of the modernization of the South in the voices of those most affected by the decline of traditional ways of life and work. Walker analyzes the recurring patterns in their narratives of change and loss, filling in gaps left by more conventional political and economic histories of southern agriculture. Southern Farmers and Their Stories also highlights the tensions inherent in the relationship between history and memory. Walker employs the concept of “communities of memory” to describe the shared sense of the past among southern farmers. History and memory converge and shape one another in communities of memory through an ongoing process in which shared meanings emerge through an elaborate alchemy of recollection and interpretation. In her careful analysis of more than five hundred oral history narratives, Walker allows silenced voices to be heard and forgotten versions of the past to be reconsidered. Southern Farmers and Their Stories preserves the shared memories and meanings of southern agricultural communities not merely for their own sake but for the potential benefit of a region, a nation, and a world that has much to learn from the lessons of previous generations of agricultural providers.

Weaving centers led the Appalachian Craft Revival at the beginning of the twentieth century. Soon after settlement workers came to the mountains to start schools, they expanded their focus by promoting weaving as a way for women to help their family's financial situation. Women wove thousands of guest towels, baby blankets, and place mats that found a ready market in the women's network of religious denominations, arts organizations, and civic clubs. In Weavers of the Southern Highlands, Philis Alvic details how the Fireside Industries of Berea College in Kentucky began with women weaving to supply their children's school expenses and later developed student labor programs, where hundreds of students covered their tuition by weaving. Arrowcraft, associated with Pi Beta Phi School at Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and the Penland Weavers and Potters, begun at the Appalachian School at Penland, North Carolina, followed the Berea model. Women wove at home with patterns and materials supplied by the center, returning their finished products to the coordinating organization to be marketed. Dozens of similar weaving centers dotted mountain ridges.

Terra Incognita is the most comprehensive bibliography of sources related to the Great Smoky Mountains ever created. Compiled and edited by three librarians, this authoritative and meticulously researched work is an indispensable reference for scholars and students studying any aspect of the region’s past. Starting with the de Soto map of 1544, the earliest document that purports to describe anything about the Great Smoky Mountains, and continuing through 1934 with the establishment of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park—today the most visited national park in the United States—this volume catalogs books, periodical and journal articles, selected newspaper reports, government publications, dissertations, and theses published during that period. This bibliography treats the Great Smoky Mountain Region in western North Carolina and east Tennessee systematically and extensively in its full historic and social context. Prefatory material includes a timeline of the Great Smoky Mountains and a list of suggested readings on the era covered. The book is divided into thirteen thematic chapters, each featuring an introductory essay that discusses the nature and value of the materials in that section. Following each overview is an annotated bibliography that includes full citation information and a bibliographic description of each entry. Chapters cover the history of the area; the Cherokee in the Great Smoky Mountains; the national forest movement and the formation of the national park; life in the locality; Horace Kephart, perhaps the most important chronicler to document the mountains and their inhabitants; natural resources; early travel; music; literature; early exploration and science; maps; and recreation and tourism. Sure to become a standard resource on this rich and vital region, Terra Incognita is an essential acquisition for all academic and public libraries and a boundless resource for researchers and students of the region.

The first and most successful rural social settlement school in the United States lies at the forks of Troublesome Creek in Knott County, Kentucky. Since its founding in 1902 by May Stone and Katherine Pettit, the Hindman Settlement School has received accolades for the quality of its education, health, and community services that have measurably improved the lives of people in the region. Challenge and Change in Appalachia is the story of a groundbreaking center for education that transformed a community. The School's farms and extension work brought modern methods to the area. At the same time, the School encouraged preservation of the region's crafts and music. Today, unique programs for dyslexic children, work in adult education, and cultural heritage activities make the School a model for rural redevelopment.

In 1899, a fundraising program for Berea College featured a group of students from the mountains of eastern Kentucky singing traditional songs from their homes. The audience was entranced. That small en-counter at the end of the last century lies near the beginning of an unparalleled national—and international—fascination with the indigenous music of a single state. Kentucky has long figured prominently in our national sense of traditional music. Over the years, a diverse group of people—reformers, enthusiasts, the musically literate and the musically illiterate, radicals, liberals, a British gentleman and his woman companion, amateurs, local residents, and academics—have been sufficiently captivated by that music to have devoted considerable energy to harvesting it from its fertile ground, studying its various manifestations, and considering its many performers. Kentucky Folkmusic: An Annotated Bibliography is a guide to the literature of this remarkable music. More than seven hundred entries, each with an evaluative annotation, comprise the largest bibliographic resource for the folkmusic of any state or region in North America. Divided into eight sections, the bibliography covers collections and anthologies; fieldworkers and scholars; singers, musicians, and other performers; text-centered studies; studies of history, context, and style; festivals; dance; and discographies, check-lists, and other reference tools. A subject index, an author index, and an index of periodicals provide access to the materials. From early hymnals and songsters to Kentucky performers of traditional music, the bibliography is a comprehensive guide to music which has for many years been one of the major emblems of American traditional music.