HUNTINGTON — Near the gas log fireplace, voices wove together, lifting the gospel hymn “Where the Soul of Man Never Dies” up through the open air of the Memorial Student Center at Marshall University.
Just a few feet away, Austin, Texas-based artist Francesco di Santis sat on the floor, meticulously sketching another person for his portrait project of Appalachia’s self-determined people fighting off mountain top removal and poverty.
And upstairs in the Don Morris Room, hundreds of Appalachian scholars, students and community members gathered for one last meal and meeting as the weekend-long Appalachian Studies Association conference came to a close Sunday.
A true patchwork quilt of people from the 13-state Appalachian region, they came together to discuss Appalachian topics such as identity, diversity, coal and education (to name only a few) with goals as to shed the hillbilly reputation, reveal the complexity of the coal industry and to discuss diverse techniques about teaching in Appalachian schools.
Marshall has hosted ASA’s national headquarters since 2001. ASA and its members take pride in their passion to support Appalachian research and creativity. ASA encourages engaging dialogue and change in order to confirm Appalachia's positive reputation locally, nationally and internationally.
“It was like a pipeline to all of these heads and hearts and spirits,” said Marshall University English professor Chris Green, who helped organize the event. “Silas House compared it to a revival.”
Green said the weekend went great, thanks to the hard work of so many at the university, such as Dan Holbrook and Monica Brooks.
“It was like when you are planning a party, and you know where all the dirt in the house is,” Green said, laughing. “This went way beyond our expectations because there are just so many people at the university that care so much about Appalachia.”
That passion for creatively tackling Appalachia’s most pressing issues bubbled out in the conference, which had a theme of "The Road Ahead: The Next Thirty Years of Appalachian Studies.”
“It’s like having a family reunion when a family comes together to celebrate a birthday, which would be the rich cultural, and for a death, which is this crisis with mountain top removal,” Green said. “I didn’t seek that out, they all brought it to the table.”
Among the 117 programs were several that addressed mountain top removal.
“Not About Coal” featured a former union miner, a coal field activist, a spokesman for the United Mine Workers and a coal field resident who is a Sierra Club environmental justice organizer.
“Conversation came to the edge, and it was about to blow up a couple times, but it didn’t,” Green said. “That talk is a conversation we have got to keep going.”
That is happening.
Santis, who drew more than 2,000 portraits of returning survivors, relief workers, rebuilders for his coffee-table book “The Post-Katrina Portraits: Written and Narrated by Hundreds,” said he and his friend Casey Crumpacker are in Appalachia for six months working on portraits of people who are staring mountain top removal in the face and fighting it.
They’ve already been to Virginia, Tennessee and southeastern Ohio, before setting up at Marshall for the weekend.
“For the self-determined communities, we are here to add momentum,” Crumpacker said standing just a few feet away from a clothesline of dozens of the portraits Santis has already completed in the area. “We want to inform people about domestic current events that have global ramifications.”
At the Don Morris Room, those who gathered for the Sunday brunch listened to inspired speeches from young students Machlyn Blair and other mountain youth speak about the future through Appalshop’s Appalachian Media Institute, an intensive summer institute and year-round media production training with youth, teachers and community groups in central Appalachia.
The meeting also gave a taste of what next year’s conference will be.
The theme is “Connecting Appalachia and the World Through Contemporary Arts, Crafts and Music.” The dates are March 27-29 at Shawnee State University in downtown Portsmouth, Ohio.
Deanna Tribe will be the event chairperson. She is as a long-time DJ on WOUB-FM 89.1 with the shows “D-28 + 5” and “Hornpipe and Fugue.”
“I think there will be some carryover,” Green said for next year’s conference. “All the people here will be back next year, because there’s a lot of people who discovered a new family — a family they had been looking for.”
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