My research uses Marxist methods to explore Appalachian literature and culture in the long twentieth century.

My dissertation sets itself three goals: first, to trace the economic conditions that have made Appalachia a place of concentrated poverty; second, to explore the unique cultural forms that arise out of and respond to those economic conditions; and third, to use Appalachia as a case study to understand larger national and international economic transformations. Drawn early into regional, national, and global circuits of capital during the shift to coal extraction that drove capitalism’s industrial maturation, Appalachia passed early once again through the process of deindustrialization as increasing productivity and decreasing demand hollowed out the coal-based labor market. This process of transformation reorganized social relations, cultural forms, racial dynamics, and the relationship between region and nation. My dissertation argues that features of the Appalachian trajectory provide a useful heuristic for understanding the social dynamic of the United States in the early decades of the 21st century and especially the dynamics of region, race, and class as they develop within our own moment of crisis and volatility.