Appalachian Cultural Influences on Graduate Students in English Studies

My paper describes three case studies, each seeking to better understand the ways college education has influenced how Appalachian graduate students perceive their identities. Each case focuses on a graduate student in the English department at a medium-sized state university, located in Appalachia, though where Appalachian students remain a minority. A great deal of scholarly work has looked at ways college conflicts or challenges students\u27 home cultures. To a degree, college is even touted as the solution to “fix” Appalachian students\u27 perceived cultural inadequacies. I wanted to know whether other Appalachian grad students, who like me had at least four years of mainstream undergraduate education, felt that this experience had substantively altered their Appalachian identities. I also wanted to know if they saw their Appalachian background as the hindrance to academic success it is often touted to be, or whether they saw value in bringing ideas of Appalachian-ness to bear on academic work. The results are highly mixed, indicating the difficulty in making definitive statements about how education affects Appalachian identities