Jim Branscome

Fifty years after the first Appalachian Studies Conference met at Berea College under the same question, Jim Branscome takes it up again. His 1974 essay "The Case for Appalachian Studies" made the argument for the field before it existed, and in this address he weighs what the field has won and what it has not. He credits Appalachian Studies with dismantling a century of slanders about mountain people. He then sets the region's ledger against the nation's, comparing what Appalachia has given in coal, timber, and labor with what it has received in return.

 

Drawing on five decades as a journalist, a federal official, and a Wall Street executive, Branscome argues that the next fifty years should turn on land, ownership, and power, and on cooperation with places that share Appalachia's history, from the Mississippi Delta to the Navajo Nation. The field's task, he says, is to produce citizens who can read a balance sheet, a deed book, and a county budget and know what to do about all three.