March 20, 2014
All Day
Thompson Library 165
Professor Limon visits from Notre Dame to present on critical regionalism, popular culture, and the uses of literacies. His presentation will place Appalachia in comparison with Mexican-American south Texas. Students will learn how regional musical cultures interact with literacy and the sense of place in two key U.S. contexts.
This paper will draw on the concept of critical regionalism and in doing so will turn to Douglas Powell’s elaboration of that concept in his work on Appalachian popular culture. Through this concept Appalachia will be put not only into comparative conjunction with Mexican-American south Texas but also the extension of the latter into the American Midwest with some emphasis on musical culture in Ohio. Evoking Richard Hoggart’s 1957 critical and autobiographical work, The Uses of Literacy, the paper also explores the role of the regional student-intellectual in these processes with the principal examples of Américo Paredes, Douglas Powell as well as the the author.
