Campus photo courtesy of MU Communications
PRELIMINARY CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
49th ANNUAL APPALACHIAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION CONFERENCE
Power of a Place, Power of Its People
Marshall University, Huntington, West Virginia
March 19 – 21, 2026
Marshall University welcomes submissions to the 49th Annual Appalachian Studies Conference, to be held in Huntington, West Virginia, an urban centerpiece in the heart of Appalachia. The Tri-State Area, where three states, three major rivers, and one of the most significant dividing lines in U.S. history converge, provides a welcoming, unique environment for sharing and learning. The conference runs from March 19 through March 21, 2026.
The 49th Annual Appalachian Studies Conference takes as its theme “Power of a Place, Power of Its People” and encourages submissions that elevate, celebrate, and interrogate the strength and diversity that give life to our region. United by the commonalities of resistance, perseverance, and pride, we invite work that elaborates and extends these themes through art, performance, research, policy/analysis, and advocacy. Although separated in geologic space by our region-defining mountains and rivers, and in political space by state borders and bureaucratic subdivisions, the Appalachian region has long served as a symbol of an alternative to the nation’s norms, the “best” and the “worst” of the American experience, and of endurance in the face of economic, political, and natural struggles.
For this gathering, we place a special emphasis on regionally significant strategies for confronting and countering issues of exploitation, prejudice, and oppression (broadly defined) relative to Appalachia. We realize, and desire, that submissions will take many different approaches to these concerns: community-based documentation, critical media-analysis, performance, literature, humanities-oriented scholarship, sociological perspectives, theological contemplation, visual art, pedagogy, etc. We seek work that focuses on the people of the region—collectively, diversely, and/or individually—that defines the simultaneously persistent and ever-evolving character of Appalachia.
Conference Chair
Cicero M. Fain, III, Ph.D., is a fourth-generation Black Huntingtonian. He received his B. A. from the University of Hawaii at Manoa and his M. Ed. from George Mason University. He is the recipient of the Carter G. Woodson Fellowship from Marshall University and received his M.A. and Ph.D. in History from The Ohio State University. His teaching career includes positions at Marshall, Ohio University-Southern, Niagara University, and the College of Southern Maryland. He has authored several articles in peer-reviewed journals, including “Buffalo Soldier, Deserter, Criminal: The Remarkably Complicated Life of Charles Ringo,” in the Ohio Valley Journal, which is his current book project. His first book, “Black Huntington: An Appalachian Story,” published in 2019 by the University of Illinois Press was a finalist for the Weatherford Award, and in 2021 the West Virginia Library Association awarded it the Literary Merit Award. He is the co-editor of the forthcoming “Black Appalachia: Race, Place, and Identity,” the follow-up anthology to 1985’s seminal Blacks in Appalachia. He is the Assistant Provost of Access and Opportunities at Marshall University, the Assistant Research Director and Outreach Specialist for the Appalachian Freedom Heritage Initiative, and the Marshall Liaison to the Appalachian Studies Association. He serves on the boards of the West Virginia Humanities Council, the Cabell-Huntington Convention & Visitors Bureau Cabell/Wayne counties, and the Carter G. Woodson Memorial Foundation.