Meaningful understanding and engagement with a place demands involvement with a community and a willingness to push past cultural boundaries.

Why Appalachian & Place-Based Studies at Sewanee?

Sewanee is more than a college town. The University of the South is situated on a plateau that includes vibrant communities outside the gates. This minor is an initiative that brings together the efforts of faculty, staff, students, and community partners toward building a transformative and replicable model of public scholarship and community. It is fundamentally grounded by a focus on place.

With this minor, you’ll adopt a concrete focus on southern Appalachia while also developing skills that will help you engage meaningfully with any place. You’ll work with others to address issues from a variety of perspectives. You’ll learn to recognize the value of public scholarship and the bringing together of expertise and skills to address community needs and visions.

A Sampling of Courses

Place, Memory, and Identity
Southern Appalachia and Place-Based Studies

This course explores critical intersections of memory, identity, and place from a multidisciplinary perspective. Students engage a series of concepts and skills regarding place—abstractly and concretely—as they relate to efforts by individuals, communities, and societies to gain meaning from the past for the present.

SAST 220
Food, Agriculture, and Social Justice in Southern Appalachia and Beyond
Southern Appalachia and Place-Based Studies

This course explores how producing, preparing, and consuming meals become expressions of individuality, social unity, and cultural identity. Current systems of food production are examined with specific consideration given to the ways in which differential production and access to food have created disparities in health and nutrition as well as how the Food Justice movement seeks to address these inequities.

SAST 325
Souther Cultures
Anthropology

An anthropological study of the southern United States emphasizes cultural continuity in both mountains and lowlands. The course uses community studies and literature to explore how indigenous interpretations fit within and react against national patterns and how locality, race, status, and gender act as social principles.

ANTH 302
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Southern Appalachian & Place-based Studies

Programs of Study

Requirements for the Minor in Southern Appalachian Studies

Contact

John C. Willis
Professor of History and Chair of Southern Appalachia and Place-Based Studies

jwillis@sewanee.edu

Walsh-Ellett 201, Ext.1534

The Domain: An Immersive Experience

The University Farm
Where Growth Happens

The University Farm seeks to give you a transformative experience through the immersive and intimate practice of restorative agriculture. The Farm offers opportunities to enhance your education and connect with the history of agriculture—especially how these ideas affect the plateau. And if you’re lucky, there will be some baby goats around during finals.

Yes, I love baby goats
Slavery Project
Slavery, race, and reconciliation

The Sewanee Project on Slavery is made up of a task force of various faculty and students on campus who are interested in issues regarding equity and race relations. The task force is focused on identifying Confederate monuments and memorials on campus and making recommendations as to how the University can best handle these tributes to the past.

Join Us
Wellness Center
Resilience, mindfulness, connection

The University Wellness Center is a campus resource which offers integrated and holistic health care and peer health education. As part of a growing initiative to provide wellness outreach to campus, the Wellness Center offers lectures on various topics related to well-being, nutrition, stress management, and spiritual wellness.

Be well