Lunch at the Library: Square Dancing in the Kentucky Foothills

News from Special Collections and Archives. Posting by Harry Rice, Sound Archivist:

When: Thursday, June 26, 2014.

Time: 11:45am to 1:00pm

Location: Library Room 106

Appalachian Sound Archives Fellowship scholar Susan Spalding will share what she has learned from her work documenting mid-1900s square dancing and clogging/flatfooting traditions in Berea and surrounding areas during that were distinct from the college’s traditional music and dance programs.

The picture that has emerged from her study in the Archives and interviews with local individuals is one of a thriving complex of community and home based dance activity that among other things included area dancers performing at Renfro Valley in the 1940s, children’s square dance teams in the 1950s, and street dances at the Berea Home-Coming during the 1950s and 1960s. Intermixed with these accounts are stories from Berea and other communities such as Estill County, about parades, music on the porch, family gatherings, honky-tonks, and long horseback rides over the mountain for a square dance.

Susan was a member of the Berea College Department of Physical Education and Health for fifteen years, and directed Dance Programs and Country Dancers.  She has been dancing in the Appalachian region for almost three decades, and has served as a consultant for the Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife and the Kentucky Folklife Festival. She co-edited the book Communities in Motion: Dance, Tradition and Community, edited the dance entries for the Encyclopedia of Appalachia, and co-produced two Appalshop video documentaries on old-time dance. Her book Appalachian Dance: Creativity and Continuity in Six Communities is forthcoming from University of Illinois Press.

New Oral History Collections Added to Our Online Catalog

News from the folks at Special Collections and Archives:

Two new oral history collections have been added to our online catalog:
Appalachian Foodways Oral History Collection, SAA 164
http://banc.berea.edu:7008/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=657763
This collection consists of audio recordings and typed transcripts of interviews recorded during the summer of 2012 by then Berea College students Katie Bills and Chelsea Bicknell as part of a foodways internship project with Berea faculty member Margaret Dotson. Foodways is the study of the interactions among food, culture, environment, and history. Twenty seven persons were interviewed for the purpose of documenting foodways in Pleasants County, West Virginia and Estill County, Kentucky. Interviewees were mostly in their 70s. A few were 90 years old or older. The interviews provide first-hand accounts of how foodways in two widely separated areas of the Appalachian region have developed and changed over the last 60 to 85 plus years. Specific subject areas described include gardening, farming, preparing food, preserving food, eating habits and preferences, and food related traditions.

Berea College Campus Ministry Oral History Collection, RG 14.14
http://banc.berea.edu:7008/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=657785
These interviews trace the development of religious life activities and programs at Berea College especially in relationship to the establishment of the position of Campus Minister and the Campus Christian Center. The memory time span of the interviewees ranges from 1930 through 1988, the time of the then most recent interview. The collection consists of audio recordings and typed transcripts of seven interviews recorded by Berea College Campus Minister Lee Morris. Five were recorded during the summer of 1983. Two additional were recorded in 1987 and 1988 respectively.

Portrait of Appalachia 2013

 

Join us this Friday, Nov. 1st at 12pm, as Special Collections student worker, John King, shares his summer internship presentation “Portrait of Appalachia 2013″. John spent the summer in a converted Volkswagen van that housed both a sleeping space and a photo booth, traveling throughout Appalachia, photographing its’ residents.

Light refreshments will be served. Presentation will be on the main floor of the library, behind the printer area.