November's Spotlight on BC Scholarship!

Happy November everyone!

This month's spotlight goes to Dr. Chad Berry. His book, Southern Migrants, Northern Exiles, "examines one of the largest internal immigrations in the U.S., allowing those migrating workers the opportunity to talk about how their migration influenced their lives and futures."

"Southern out-migration drew millions of southern workers to the steel mills, automobile factories, and even agricultural fields and orchards of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois. Through vivid oral histories, Chad Berry explores the conflict between migrants' economic success and their "spiritual exile" in the North. He documents the tension between factory owners who welcomed cheap, naive southern laborers and local "native" workers who greeted migrants with suspicion and hostility. He examines the phenomenon of "shuttle migration," in which migrants came north to work during the winter and returned home to plant spring crops on their southern farms. He also explores the impact of southern traditions--especially the southern evangelical church and "hillbilly" music--brought north by migrants.

Berry argues that in spite of being scorned by midwesterners for violence, fecundity, intoxication, laziness, and squalor, the vast majority of southern whites who moved to the Midwest found the economic prosperity they were seeking. By allowing southern migrants to assess their own experiences and tell their own stories, Southern Migrants, Northern Exiles refutes persistent stereotypes about migrants' clannishness, life-style, work ethic, and success in the North."

-University of Illinois Press. 

Want to read more? Come and check out Dr. Chad Berry's books! 

The Hayloft Gang by Chad Berry (Editor)

Call Number: 781.642 H421 2008 - BC Scholarship Collection (3rd Floor)

Publication Date: 2008

The National Barn Dance was the nation's most popular country music radio show during the 1930s and 1940s, essentially defining country and western entertainment until it was supplanted by the Grand Ole Opry and rock 'n' roll in the 1950s. Broadcast for more than three decades from Chicago on WLS's powerful 50,000-watt signal, the show reached listeners throughout the Midwest, the East Coast, and large regions of the South, delivering popular entertainment to rural and urban areas and celebrating the folk traditions that were fading in an increasingly urbanized America. Drawing on the colorful commentary of performers and former listeners, these essays analyze the National Barn Dance and its audience, trace the history of barn dance radio, explore the paradox of country music in a major urban center, investigate notions of authenticity in the presentation of country music and entertainment, and delve into other provocative issues raised by the barn dance phenomenon.

 

Looking and Learning: Visual Literacy Across the Disciplines by Deandra Little (Editor); Peter Felten (Editor); Chad Berry (Editor)

Call Number: 371.904 L863 2015 - BC Scholarship Collection (3rd Floor)

Publication Date: 2015

In this volume, the authors focus on the importance of inclusive teaching and the role faculty can play in helping students achieve, though not necessarily in the same way. To teach with a focus on inclusion means to believe that every person has the ability to learn. It means that most individuals want to learn, to improve their ability to better understand the world in which they live, and to be able to navigate their pathways of life. This volume includes the following topics: best practices for teaching students with social, economic, gender, or ethnic differences adjustments to the teaching and learning process to focus on inclusion strategies for teaching that help learners connect what they know with the information presented environments that maximize learners academic and social growth. The premise of inclusive teaching works to demonstrate that all people can and do learn. 

 

Studying Appalachian Studies by Chad Berry (Editor); Philip J. Obermiller (Editor); Shaunna L. Scott (Editor)

Call Number: 974 S933 2015 - BC Scholarship Collection (3rd Floor)

Publication Date: 2015

In this collection, contributors reflect on scholarly, artistic, activist, educational, and practical endeavor known as Appalachian Studies. Following an introduction to the field, the writers discuss how Appalachian Studies illustrates the ways interdisciplinary studies emerge, organize, and institutionalize themselves, and how they engage with intellectual, political, and economic forces both locally and around the world.   Essayists argue for Appalachian Studies' integration with kindred fields like African American studies, women's studies, and Southern studies, and they urge those involved in the field to globalize the perspective of Appalachian Studies; to commit to continued applied, participatory action, and community-based research; to embrace more fully the field's capacity for bringing about social justice; to advocate for a more accurate understanding of Appalachia and its peop≤ and to understand and overcome the obstacles interdisciplinary studies face in the social and institutional construction of knowledge.

Southern Migrants, Northern Exiles by Chad Berry

Call Number: 304.809 B534so Copy 1 - BC Scholarship Collection (3rd Floor)

Publication Date: 2000

In this record of ordinary lives, dozens of white southern migrants describe their experiences in the northern wilderness and their irradicable attachments to family and community in the South.