Berea Sound Archives Fellowship Topics

Mary Beth Bingman / Dungannon, Virginia / 2014-2015 Fellow / Topic: Appalachian Oral History

Project: Mary Beth’s Fellowship supported work involves recording oral history interviews to document a project that came to be called the Fellowship House Day Camp, a racially integrated day camp in Knoxville, Tennessee held every summer from 1950 until 1972. Interviews will include former campers as well as parents and others who were involved in the project’s development and ongoing operation.

Mary Beth has extensive professional experience in adult education and arts administration in recent years at the University of Tennessee Center for Literacy Studies and Appalshop, Incorporated in Whitesburg, Kentucky. She reported on the results of her Fellowship research in a presentation at the 2016 Appalachian Studies Conference and produced a related radio feature for Mountain News and World Report program on WMMT in Whitesburg, Kentucky.

Lauren Hayes  / Tucson, Arizona / 2013-2014 / Topics: Oral History; Appalachian Women Factory Workers

Project: Lauren’s research involves the documentation of personal work histories and spoken narratives of working life among women factory, manufacturing, and service workers in Appalachian Kentucky. These work histories and narratives will include reflections about current and past work opportunities for women in the region, descriptions of current circumstances among Appalachian women workers, and descriptions of daily work activities and responsibilities. The project is an important component of her dissertation research in Berea that explores how Appalachian working women negotiate the challenges of the modern workplace.

Lauren’s research will result in a collection of audio-recordings and documentary material including transcripts and a field log about Appalachian women in the modern workplace for future use in Hutchins Library’s Department of Special Collections and Archives.  She presented her paper  "An Ethnographic Study of Appalachian Women Working in the New Economy" at the 2015 Appalachian Studies Association Conference.

Lauren is a Ph.D. candidate in cultural and linguistic anthropology at the University of Arizona in Tucson and a visiting scholar of Berea College’s Women’s and Gender Studies program.