Undergraduate Research: An Archive - 2021 Program
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Mollie Price ’21<br />
ENGLISH<br />
Certificate in Environmental Studies<br />
THESIS TITLE<br />
We Can't Put It Back: A<br />
Century of Appalachian<br />
Coal in Song<br />
ADVISER<br />
Rob Nixon, Thomas A.<br />
and Currie C. Barron<br />
Family Professor in<br />
Humanities and the<br />
Environment, Professor<br />
of English and the High<br />
Meadows Environmental<br />
Institute<br />
“We Can’t Put It Back” is a discussion on<br />
Appalachia’s complex relationship with coal<br />
during the past century analyzed through the<br />
lens of several coal songs. As the coal industry<br />
enters its twilight years in Appalachia, this<br />
music remains an enduring and important<br />
aspect of both coal culture and Appalachian<br />
culture more broadly. I examined these songs in<br />
order to place them in their historical contexts<br />
and put them in conversation with relevant<br />
modern events. My analysis revealed enduring<br />
and difficult truths about social, political,<br />
environmental and economic elements of<br />
coal’s relationship with the people who live<br />
and work with and around it. This encourages<br />
a reflection on the immeasurable depth of loss<br />
that has accompanied coal during its tenure in<br />
Appalachia – and a reflection on what it means to<br />
persist and live in a landscape and a community<br />
that has been irrevocably altered.<br />
ENVIRONMENTAL<br />
HUMANITIES AND CULTURE<br />
32
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