Guest Lecturers
Gwen Ashburn, Ph.D., Dean of Humanities,at University of North Carolina Asheville, and Associate Professor of Literature and Language Dr. Ashburn has been published in “The International Journal of Psycho Linguistics,” “Kentucky English Bulletin,” “The Thomas Wolfe Review,” “The Companion to Southern Literature” and Reader’s Guide to Literature in English. Her recent publications focus on Sharyn McCrumb’s The Ballad of Frankie Silver in “Literature and Law” and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird in a volume for English teachers. She is a member of the National Council of Teachers of English, the Modern Language Association and the Appalachian Studies Association. Her interests include southern and Appalachian literature, linguistics, travel writing and women’s history.
Ronald Eller, Ph.D., University of Kentucky. Originally from southern West Virginia, Ron Eller has spent the last thirty years writing and teaching about the Appalachian region. A descendent of eight generations of families from Appalachia, Dr. Eller is the former director of the Appalachian Center and Professor of History at the University of Kentucky where he coordinates research and service programs on a wide range of Appalachian policy issues including education, health care, economic development, civic leadership and the environment. Dr. Eller will discuss the industrialization of the mountains and the role of the federal government in the region in the 20th century. Dr. Eller is the author of two seminal works on modern Appalachia: Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers: Industrialization of the Appalachian South,1880-1930 and Uneven Ground: Appalachia Since 1945 as well as over sixty scholarly articles. He has served as Chairman of the Kentucky Appalachian Task Force, founding Chairman of the Kentucky Appalachian Commission and as a member of the Sustainable Communities Task Force of President Clinton’s Council on Sustainable Development. Among other awards, he is the recipient of the Jim Wayne Miller Award for Distinguished Service to Appalachia, the Willis D. Weatherford Award for Appalachian Scholarship, the East Kentucky Leadership Foundation Special Award, and the University of Kentucky William E. Lyons Award for Outstanding Public Service.
John Inscoe, Ph.D, Albert W. Saye Professor of History, University of Georgia. John Inscoe is the author of Mountain Masters: Slavery and the Sectional Crisis in Western North Carolina; Race, War, and Remembrance in the Appalachian South; and co-author of The Heart of Confederate Appalachia: The Civil War in Western North Carolina, and has edited or co-edited volumes on Georgia race relations, Appalachians and race in the 19th century, southern Unionists during the Civil War, and on Confederate nationalism and identity, produced as a tribute to Emory Thomas. He has completed a forthcoming book entitled Writing the South through the Self: Explorations in Southern Autobiography. He edited the Georgia Historical Quarterly for fifteen years and is currently the editor of the New Georgia Encyclopedia and Secretary-Treasurer of the Southern Historical Association.
Timothy Silver, Ph.D. is professor of history at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. His publications include A New Face on the Countryside: Indians, Colonists, and Slaves in South Atlantic Forests, 1500-1800.. His most recent book, Mount Mitchell and the Black Mountains: An Environmental History of the Highest Peaks in Eastern America
was winner of the Phillip D. Reed Memorial Award, Southern Environmental Law Center.
Helen Wykle University of North Carolina at Asheville
