JOHNSON CITY – East Tennessee State University’s Center of Excellence for Appalachian
Studies and Services has received a nearly $50,000 grant from the National Endowment
for the Humanities (NEH) to begin developing an online, open-access version of its
acclaimed Encyclopedia of Appalachia.
The grant is part of $35 million in NEH grants awarded to 258 humanities projects
across the country and is one of only five awarded in Tennessee. Dr. Ron Roach, director
of the Center, will lead the project and serve as a general editor.
“Our Center of Excellence is delighted to lead this multi-year project that will involve
scholars from across ETSU and the Appalachian region,” said Roach. “This is the only
encyclopedia focused on Appalachia, and the online version will allow people across
the world to access reliable content about this remarkable region for years to come.
We are grateful to the NEH for its support of this important initiative.”
The online encyclopedia will be produced in partnership with The University of Tennessee
Press, which also published the print edition of the work in 2006. That edition contained
more than 2,000 articles and 1,832 pages of text and included work by more than 1,000
contributors.
Leading scholars from across the region, including ETSU professors, will serve on
the initial editorial advisory board for the project: Dr. Theresa Burriss (Radford
University), Drs. Daryl Carter and Tom Lee (ETSU), Dr. Chris Green (Berea College),
Dr. Meredith McCarroll (Bowdoin College), Dr. Emily Satterwhite (Virginia Tech), and
independent scholars Drs. Donald Davis and William Turner.
In addition to Roach, three ETSU staff and faculty members from the Center will serve
as general editors: Dr. Jeremy Smith, director of the Archives of Appalachia; Dr.
Rebecca Adkins Fletcher, assistant director of the Center; and Dr. Ted Olson, professor
of Appalachian Studies.
“These 258 newly funded projects demonstrate the vitality of the humanities across
our nation,” said NEH Chair Shelly C. Lowe (Navajo). “NEH is proud to support exemplary
education, preservation, media, research, and infrastructure projects that expand
resources for Americans, support humanities programs and opportunities for underserved
students and communities, and deepen our understanding of our history, culture, and
society.”
ETSU’s Center of Excellence, founded in 1984, has a long history of producing leading
scholarship about the region and includes the Archives of Appalachia, the Reece Museum,
the Regional Resource Institute, and the Institute for Appalachian Music and Culture.
The Center also publishes an online magazine, Appalachian Places. The Center is part
of the Department of Appalachian Studies. More information is available at etsu.edu/cas/das/.
About the NEH: Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the National Endowment
for the Humanities supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy,
and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from
around the nation. Additional information about the National Endowment for the Humanities
and its grant programs is available at neh.gov.