In the fall of 1865, two Union officers stationed in East Tennessee during the Civil War - Hiram Chamberlain and John Wilder -- decided to stay in the South to pursue business careers. They recognized potential in the "untapped" resources they had seen during military operations in this part of the state. Within the space of four years, Chamberlain and Wilder had recruited business partners, built an operating iron furnace in the Upper Tennessee River Valley (the Roane Iron Company), and established a company town at Rockwood, Tennessee. Twenty years later, in some parts of Appalachia, new planned towns were being established by land companies that wanted to develop model industrial real estate ventures. In the Upper Tennessee River Valley, these new towns - Cardiff, Harriman, and Lenoir City, Tennessee - were planned to be the quintessential places for industrial production and urban living as they were characterized by urban/sanitary reform ideals, temperance tenets, and distinctive urban landscapes. In Appalachian Aspirations, John Benhart presents the story of the evolution of capitalism and regional development in the Upper Tennessee River Valley in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

How African Americans thrived in a West Virginia city By 1930, Huntington had become West Virginia's largest city. Its booming economy and relatively tolerant racial climate attracted African Americans from across Appalachia and the South. Prosperity gave these migrants political clout and spurred the formation of communities that defined black Huntington--factors that empowered blacks to confront institutionalized and industrial racism on the one hand and the white embrace of Jim Crow on the other. Cicero M. Fain III illuminates the unique cultural identity and dynamic sense of accomplishment and purpose that transformed African American life in Huntington. Using interviews and untapped archival materials, Fain details the rise and consolidation of the black working class as it pursued, then fulfilled, its aspirations. He also reveals how African Americans developed a host of strategies--strong kin and social networks, institutional development, property ownership, and legal challenges--to defend their gains in the face of the white status quo. Eye-opening and eloquent, Black Huntington makes visible another facet of the African American experience in Appalachia.

In this work the various ways that social, economic, and cultural factors influence the identities and educational aspirations of rural working-class Appalachian learners are explored. The objectives are to highlight the cultural obstacles that impact the intellectual development of such students and to address how these cultural roadblocks make transitioning into college difficult. Throughout the book, the author draws upon his personal experiences as a first-generation college student from a small coalmining town in rural West Virginia. Both scholarly and personal, the book blends critical theory, ethnographic research, and personal narrative to demonstrate how family work histories and community expectations both shape and limit the academic goals of potential Appalachian college students.

Drawn mainly from the centennial anniversary symposium on James Agee held at the University of Tennessee in the fall of 2009, the essays of Agee at 100 are as diverse in topic and purpose as is Agee’s work itself. Often devalued during his life by those who thought his breadth a hindrance to greatness, Agee’s achievements as a poet, novelist, journalist, essayist, critic, documentarian, and screenwriter are now more fully recognized. With its use of previously unknown and recently recovered materials as well as established works, this groundbreaking new collection is a timely contribution to the resurgence of interest in Agee’s significance. The essays in this collection range from the scholarly to the personal, and all offer insight into Agee’s writing, his cultural influence, and ultimately Agee himself. Dwight Garner opens with his reflective essay on “Why Agee Matters.” Several essays present almost entirely new material on Agee. Paul Ashdown writes on Agee’s book reviews, which, unlike Agee’s film criticism, have received scant attention. With evidence from two largely unstudied manuscripts, Jeffrey Couchman sets the record straight on Agee’s contribution to the screenplay for The African Queen and delves as well into his television “miniseries” screenplay Mr. Lincoln. John Wranovics treats Agee’s lesser-known films--the documentaries In the Street and The Quiet One and the Filipino epic Genghis Khan. Jeffrey J. Folks wrestles with Agee’s “culture of repudiation” while James A. Crank investigates his perplexing treatment of race in his prose. Jesse Graves and Andrew Crooke provide new analyses of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, and Michael A. Lofaro and Philip Stogdon both discuss Lofaro’s recently restored text of A Death in the Family. David Madden closes the collection with his short story “Seeing Agee in Lincoln,” an imagined letter from Agee to his longtime confidante Father Flye. The contributors to Agee at 100 utilize materials new and old to reveal the true importance of Agee's range of cultural sensibility and literary ability. Film scholars will also find this collection particularly engrossing, as will anyone fascinated by the work of the author rightly deemed the “sovereign prince of the English language.” Michael A. Lofaro is Lindsay Young Professor of American Literature and American and Cultural Studies at the University of Tennessee. Most recently, he restored James Agee’s A Death in the Family and is the general editor of the projected eleven-volume The Works of James Agee.

"John T. Wilder was an entrepreneur, Civil War general, and business leader who would become influential in the development of post-Civil War Chattanooga. A northern transplant who made his early fortune in the iron industry, Wilder would gain notoriety in the Western Theater through his victories at the battles of Chattanooga, Chickamauga, and throughout the Tullahoma and Atlanta Campaigns while leading the famous "Lightning Brigade." After the Civil War, he relocated to Chattanooga and began the Roane Iron Company and fostered southern ironworks throughout the southeast. He was elected mayor of Chattanooga but would fail to be elected to Congress as its representative. Finally, he was instrumental in the establishment of national military parks in Chattanooga and Chickamauga. Nicely's biography captures the life of a man important to the overall development of Chattanooga and East Tennessee and argues that Wilder was influential in bringing both northern and immigrant populations to the area"--