Related Berea Sound Archives Sites
- Traditional Music and Spoken Word Performances This link opens in a new windowListen to selected musical performances and storytelling from the Berea Sound Archives.
- Alan Lomax Kentucky CollectionListen to ocumentary sound recordings of rural Kentucky music and lore collected under the auspices of the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress between 1933 and 1942.
- Oral History Collections GuideBerea's online oral history collections cover a broad range of topics in the areas of Appalachian history and culture, and the history of Berea College. In many instances searchable transcripts accompany the digitized audio recordings.
- Examples of Oral Histories For Use As Primary SourcesSelected interview texts and recordings covering a wide range of topics.
- Sound Recording Analysis WorksheetA teaching / learning resource from the National Archives.
- Sound Archives Research GuidesResearch guides are the work of Archives staff and the College's Sound Archives Fellows. Using audio and video illustrations, the guides cover a wide range of topics.
- Sound Preservation ProgramThe program's focus is on Berea's collections of noncommercial recordings that document Appalachian history and culture and the history of Berea College.
- Berea Sound Archives HomepageBrowse By Topic
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Radio Resources & Writing Process
Regional Importance of the Radio
Though the mountain South was still rural and isolated in many respects, many families owned radios and enjoyed programming broadcasted from urban centers. Chad Berry quotes radio historian, Susan Smulyan, in his essay from “Assessing the National Barn Dance”: “Farmers and radio seemed made for each other.” Building from Smulyan’s argument, Berry observers: “What could be more exotic and progressive than listening to a voice conveying weather information or old-‐time music from Chicago, hundreds of miles away. The answer of course is nothing, and it’s the reason my grandmother in the 1930’s was willing to part with some her prize hens in order to take part in this national entertainment medium.”
A majority of my research focused on WHAS radio programming between 1939-‐ 1944, with a particular emphasis on broadcasts focused on events leading up the World War II.
I wanted to sample a range of radio broadcasts, as a way of exploring how Eve might understand both local culture and global current events, and was struck by how varied the WHAS programming was as well the many textures of language reflected in these broadcasts. Over the course of my research, I listened to language that was formal, Biblical, folksy, idiomatic, grave, jocular, and whimsical and hope to capture this play of diction and tone across the poems of the book.
Above all, especially in Chapter Two, the book will explore how radio worked to reshape Eve’s perception of her world—or rather, how it gradually, working concomitantly with her own curiosity and restlessness, to crystallize an image of her place in the world, forged from a sharpened understanding of her home as well as the world beyond.
