Visar resultat för..."University of Tennessee Press"

Richly illustrated and easily accessible, Appalachian Plants draws on centuries of botanical, cultural, and spiritual connections to the land as it invites readers of all ages into the vibrant world of southern Appalachia. Featuring regional staples such as ramps, tobacco, pawpaw, mountain mint, and white pine alongside more recent horticultural additions like rhubarb, persimmons, and sugar maples, the book presents a layered portrait of Appalachian flora. While author Linda Hager Pack provides scientific names and physical characteristics of each plant, her work goes beyond botany as each entry is enlivened with Native American legends, traditional folk remedies, historic recipes, and Appalachian lore that reveal the deeply rooted significance of plants in this storied region.The book honors the long history of plant use among the Cherokee and other Native American peoples of Appalachia, who developed sophisticated systems of herbal medicine, seasonal harvesting, and spiritual practices. From white pine salves to pawpaw fruit tonics, their knowledge shaped generations of land stewardship and ecological understanding. Additionally, European settlers brought seeds, farming practices, and folk beliefs from their home countries as well, adapting Old World crops and customs to mountain life. Meanwhile, African American enslaved people, servants, and free men and women also contributed a wealth of agricultural knowledge and medicinal plant traditions, immeasurably influencing the evolution of Appalachian foodways and herbal practices.This blending of traditions created a rich ethnobotanical legacy, one rooted in survival, community, and respect for the natural world. Featuring beautiful watercolor illustrations by Pat Banks and supported by instructional resources, this book serves both as a unique field guide and a cultural history of Appalachia. It invites readers to explore not just the uses of plants, but the stories they carry—across generations, geographies, and peoples—within the living landscape of Appalachia.

"Take the backroads, not the highways," Minnie Pearl often said—a sentiment that captures her life's winding, unpredictable journey. Born Sarah Ophelia Colley in 1912, she grew up in Centerville, Tennessee. This small-town upbringing inspired her imagined hometown of Grinder's Switch.During the Great Depression, Sarah moved to Nashville to study theater at the Ward-Belmont School. After graduating, she joined a touring theater company and performed throughout the Southeast. It was on the road, in 1936, that she met and stayed with Mattie Burden. Mattie became the inspiration for Minnie Pearl's iconic persona—a witty country girl known for her signature greeting and straw hat with a dangling price tag.Minnie Pearl's big break came in 1940 when a friend of a WSM radio executive saw her perform and recommended her for the Grand Ole Opry. Her debut marked the beginning of a career that spanned more than fifty years. Garth Brooks later remarked, "When she walked out, everybody waited for the 'How-dee!' It's just two syllables, one word, but every time she said it—it felt like it was just for you."At the Opry, the "Queen of Country Comedy" shared the spotlight with legends like Patsy Cline and Hank Williams. After World War II, she became a mentor and matriarch, befriending a young June Carter and warming up the crowd for Johnny Cash's Opry debut in 1955.Throughout her career, Cannon skillfully balanced her dual roles as Minnie and Sarah. Whether at the Opry, on the road, or on Hee Haw, Minnie remained a trusted friend to female performers like Dolly Parton, Tanya Tucker, and Reba McEntire. As k.d. lang noted, "Minnie understood where country music needed to go and who it needed to embrace. She was a visionary."Rich with 155 historic photographs, this definitive biography covers the many chapters of Sarah Cannon's life. Drawing from archives and interviews with those who knew her, Howdy! The Minnie Pearl Story, captures not only Cannon's enduring humor and impact, but also the woman behind the laughter.

No other book on the Southern Appalachians is more widely known or cited.  "Awonderful book. I like it especially for its color and anecdotes. It is a classic, not only for its accuracy and breadth of insights into the people of the region, but because these people themselves are so interesting and strong."—Annie Dillard, author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Visionaries of all ages and places have pursued Utopias, dreaming impossible dreams of starting over in new communities fashioned more closely to their ideals. In Visions of Utopia, John Egerton traces the fascinating history of the experimental communities founded by such groups in Tennessee. He focuses in particular on three extraordinary colonies of the 19th century, each of them widely known in its time: Nashoba, and interracial settlement near Memphis in 1825; Rugby, an English cooperative community on the Cumberland Plateau in 1880; and Ruskin, a socialist community in Dickson County in 1894.John Egerton is a native Southerner – A Georgian by birth, a Kentuckian in his childhood and youth, a Floridian during the early 1960’s, and a Tennessean since 1965. He is a grandson of one of the English colonists who started the Rugby settlement in 1880. As a journalist and author, he has written articles on a variety of subjects for more than twenty magazines, and has published two books about the South: A Mind to Stay Here (1970) and The Americanization of Dixie (1974).

Country music grew up in Tennessee, drawing from sources in the white rural music of East and Middle Tennessee, from the church music of country singing conventions, and from the black music of the Memphis area.  The author traces the vital role played by Tennessee and its musicians in the development of this unique American art form.

Memphis is built on land once the bottom of a sea, Nashville rests within a 600-foot-depth basin eroded from a mighty arch, Knoxville and Chattanooga nestle on lands that have migrates – Knoxville’s underpinning traveling all the way from the middle of Sevier County. Our Restless Earth is written for all Tennesseans who are curios about the origins of familiar landscapes. Edward T. Luther describes a state that has attracted specialists from all over the world to study its fascinating geology, a state that in its long east-west axis encompasses nine distinct geologic regions. Appearing here are phenomena such as the New Madrid earthquake that formed Reelfoot lake, the state’s almost forgotten gold rush, 60-foot reptiles that once inhabited parts of McNairy County, and the contrary Tennessee River that could not decide which way to flow. The origins of the state’s oil, coal, iron, marble, and famous cave country – these too are a part of Our Restless Earth.Edward T. Luther is a native Tennessean whose professional career as a geologist and personal interest in writing have pointed him toward the preparation of this book. Since receiving his advanced degree in geology from Vanderbilt University in 1951, he has come to know that state intimately – first as a team member of the Tennessee Geological Survey and more recently as supervisor of the Survey’s research program. He is also an avid reader of fiction and has long been interested in applying writing skills to his technical knowledge in order to make the fascinating science of the earth available to a wider audience.

Hernando De Soto’s invasion of Indian lands in 1540 marked the onslaught of great change in the lives of Tennessee’s Native Americans. Although these first Tennesseans boasted a cultural heritage of thousands of years, only three centuries of contact with the white man elapsed before their population was decimated and the remnants driven out. The Indians were a settled people when de Soto visited, not the savage or exotic woods creatures so often depicted. Tennessee’s Indian Peoples, then, is a story of men and women – human beings. Author, Ronald N. Satz tells how the Cherokees, Chickasaws, Creeks, Shawnees, and other Indian peoples lived, reared families, farmed and hunted, worshipped, played, fought, and governed themselves. He describes also the eventful destruction of their societies – destroyed not only by external pressures for Indian lands, but also by internal change wrought by increasing dependence on the white man’s trade goods.Ronald N. Satz is Dean of Graduate Studies and University Research and teaches history at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. In addition to numerous articles and book reviews, his published work includes American Indian Policy in the Jacksonian Era (1975). He has received fellowships from both the Ford Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Professor Satz has served as a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the American Indian Quarterly.

Colorful, dramatic, blundering, and tragic – these are some of the adjectives that have been applied to the two-day engagement at Shiloh. This battle, which bears the biblical name meaning “place of peace,” was one of the bloodiest encounters of the Civil War. The Union colonel, whose words give the present book its title, foretold the losses when he told his men: “Fill your canteens Boys! Some of you will be in hell before night….”Fought in the early spring of 1862 on the west bank of the Mississippi state line, Shiloh was, up to that time, the biggest battle of American history. One hundred thousand men were involved, and major Civil War commanders such as Grant, Sherman, Johnston, Beauregard, Bragg, and Forrest participated. The battle took the life of Johnston and it left a lasting impact on the reputation of other commanders. More-over, it played a significant role in the campaign for control of the Mississippi Valley.Although hundreds of books have been written about the Civil War and its battle, questions about the disorganized struggle at Shiloh have continued to perplex historians. Why was Grant absent when his army was attacked? Why did Grant and Sherman apparently ignore evidence of a Confederate advance? What happened to Lew Wallace that he never got his division into the fight on the first day of battle? Why did it take the Rebels so long to make their way from Corinth to the battlefield? Did the Rebels really have a distinct opportunity to win the battle, as it seems in retrospect, or were they doomed from the start? Were Johnston and Beauregard working at cross-purposes? Shiloh-In Hell Before Night provides answers or clues to answers of clues to answers for these and other questions arising from this controversial engagement.The author tells his story by placing Shiloh in the larger context of the war and by exploring the very personal side of the conflict through the words of the Union and Confederate participants, officers and common soldiers alike. Touches of humor and even or romance are revealed in the midst of the carnage, but the overriding element is the specter of death. Among those who survived, the soldiers who had been eager to “see the elephant,” as they commonly referred to combat, could never again feel so eager for a fight.James Lee McDonough is professor of history at Auburn University, and the author of Stones River – Bloody Winter in Tennessee, Chattanooga – A Death Grip on the Confederacy, and the co-author of Five Tragic Hours: The Battle of Franklin.

Oak Ridge, Tennessee, was created by the U.S. government during World War II to aid in the construction of the first atomic bomb. Drawing on oral history and previously classified material, this book portrays the patterns of daily life in this unique setting.

Few black groups in the United States carry with them the romance, the gripping history, the pathos, the indestructible spirit of the Coe Ridge colony during the ninety years of its existence.". . . a new and long needed departure in American historiography. . . . This is in every way an impressive book.  It contains detailed accounts of the informants, tables of folklore motifs, genealogical charts, a prologue and epilogue explaining authoritatively the hypotheses of oral traditional history, and handsome photographs of the Coe Ridge area."--Richard M. Dorson, Journal of American History.  "Lynwood Montell has written an invaluable book for all those interested in the use of oral tradition as a tool in the reconstruction of history. . . . This is a book worthy of being on any folklorist's shelf."--Richaed A. Reuss, Journal of American Folklore.

Tennessee gave the United States three presidents – Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk, and Andrew Johnson. To produce this illuminating account of their lives from their own points of view, Professor Williams has drawn on letters, biographies, and monographs. Although their family backgrounds and levels of education differed, each of the three men developed an interest in politics early in his career and realized his greatest political success during the presidency. Although none of the three considered himself a reformer, each man made decisions that had lasting effects on the country. In Tennessee’s Presidents, Frank B. Williams, Jr., portrays Jackson, Polk, and Johnson as men influenced by their environments, the issues of the day, and the public they served.Frank B. Williams, Jr., is professor emeritus of history, east Tennessee State University, won that institution’s Distinguished Faculty Award in 1977. The author of numerous articles, he was the recipient of the 1955 McClung Award for the best article in Publications of the East Tennessee Historical Society.

E. Stanly Godbold, Jr. (1942- ), is a historian who is writing a two-volumbe biography of Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter. His first volume was published by Oxford Univesity Press in 2010 and has attracted much attention for its positive interpretation of the Carters. He is also the author of Ellen Glasgow and the Woman Within, Christopher Gadsden and the American Revolution, and Confederate Colonel and Cherokee Chief: The Life of William Holland Thomas. He lives in Oktibbeha County, Mississippi.

This carefully edited collection of essays explores, in greater diversity and depth than has been attempted before, the relationship between film and religion. Combining perspectives from traditional film criticism and from religious studies, Religion in Film asserts that it is no longer possible to view films simply in terms of their moral impact, nor is it reasonable to limit religious meaning only to those films that make and explicit appeal to religious elements.The essays offer a variety of theoretical reflections on the religious interpretation of film, explore particular cinematic variations on the archetypal images of savior and demon, analyze significant cultural trends of a religious nature related to film, and assess thirteen sensibilities – Altman, Bergman, Bunuel, Chaplin, Coppola, Fellini, Hitchcock, Jutra, Kubrick, Peckinpah, Russell, Truffaut, and Wertmuller. The contributors provide a firm basis for analysis while respecting a variety in interpretation.As the overall structure of the book leads from the universal to the particular, from theory to individual directors and films, so its concern with religious interpretation flows naturally from the universally religious to particular religious worldviews. Among world religions, Christianity claims attention in proportion to its dominant cultural influence in the West where film has more obviously flourished.The insights and interpretations presented in these essays will be of importance to cinema scholars, film critics, and students of religion and of interest to film buffs, particularly those who are sensible of the religious dimension of films.

On December 31, 1862, some 10,000 Confederate soldiers streamed out of the dim light of early morning to stun the Federals who were still breakfasting in their camp. Nine months earlier the Confederates had charged the Yankees in a similarly devastating attack at dawn, starting the Battle of Shiloh. By the time this new battle ended, it would resemble Shiloh in other ways – it would rival that struggle’s shocking casualty toll of 24,000 and it would become a major defeat for the South. By any Civil War standard, Stones River was a monumental, bloody, and dramatic story. Yet, until now, it has had no modern, documented history. Arguing that the battle was one of the significant engagements in the war, noted Civil War historian James Lee McDonough here devotes to Stones River the attention it ahs long deserved.Stones River, at Murfreesboro, Tennessee, was the first big battle in the union campaign to seize the Nashville-Chattanooga-Atlanta corridor. Driving eastward and southward to sea, the campaign eventually climaxed in Sherman’s capture of Savannah in December 1864. At Stones River the two armies were struggling desperately for control of Middle Tennessee’s railroads and rich farms. Although they fought to a tactical draw, the Confederates retreated.The battle’s outcome held significant implications. For the Union, the victory helped offset the disasters suffered at Fredericksburg and Chickasaw Bayou. Furthermore, it may have discouraged Britain and France from intervening on behalf of the Confederacy. For the South, the battle had other crucial effects. Since in convinced many that General Braxton Bragg could not successfully command an army, Stones River left the Southern Army torn by dissension in the high command and demoralized in the ranks.One of the most perplexing Civil War battles, Stones River has remained shrouded in unresolved questions. After driving the Union right wing for almost three miles, why could the Rebels not complete the triumph? Could the Union’s Major General William S. Rosecrans have launched a counterattack on the first day of the battle? Was personal tension between Bragg and Breckenridge a significant factor in the events of the engagement’s last day?McDonough uses a variety of sources to illuminate these and other questions. Quotations from diaries, letters, and memoirs of the soldiers involved furnish the reader with a rare, soldier’s-eye view of this tremendously violent campaign. Tactics, strategies, and commanding officers are examined to reveal how personal strengths and weaknesses of the opposing generals, Bragg and Rosecrans, shaped the course of the battle. Vividly recreating the events of the calamitous battle, Stones River – Bloody Winter in Tennessee firmly establishes the importance of this previously neglected landmark in Civil War history.James Lee McDonough is professor of history at Auburn University, and author of Shiloh – In Hell before Night, Chattanooga – A Death Grip on the Confederacy, and co-author of Five Tragic Hours: The Battle of Franklin.

On a November afternoon in 1864, the weary Gen. John Bell Hood surveyed the army waiting to attack the Federals at Franklin, Tennessee. He gave the signal almost at dusk, and the Confederates rushed forward to utter devastation. This book describes the events and causes of the five-hour battle in gripping detail, particularly focusing on the reasons for such slaughter at a time when the outcome of the war had already been decided.The genesis of the senseless tragedy, according to McDonough and Connelly, lay in the appointment of Hood to command the Army of Tennessee. It was his decision to throw a total force of some 20,000 men into an ill-advised frontal assault against the Union troops. The Confederates made their approach, without substantial artillery support, on a level of some two miles. Why did Hood select such a catastrophic strategy? The authors analyze his reasoning in full. Their vivid and moving narrative, with statements from eyewitnesses to the battle, make compelling reading for all Civil War buffs and historians.James Lee McDonough is Justin Potter Professor of History at David-Lipscomb College and is the author of Shiloh and Stones River.Thomas L. Connelly, professor of history at the university of South Carolina, is the author of Army of the Heartland, The Marble Man, and Autumn of Glory, a two-volume history of the Army of Tennessee.

This volume presents the story of the Eastern Band of Cherokees during the nineteenth century. This group – the tribal remnant in North Carolina that escaped removal in the 1830’s – found their fortitude and resilience continually tested as they struggled with a variety of problems, including the upheavals of the Civil War and Reconstruction, internal divisiveness, white encroachment on their lands, and a poorly defined relationship with the state and federal governments. Yet despite such stresses and a selective adaptation in the face of social and economic changes, the Eastern Cherokees retained a sense of tribal identity as they stood at the threshold of the twentieth century.

" . . . provides valuable information for the specialist in American studies, and for the anthropologist or folklorist focusing on food use, and may also be of interest to the general reading audience.  With such a wide appeal, the book may not only document the American romance with ethnic foods, but may contribute to it as well."—Joanne Wagner, Anthropological Quarterly How do customs surrounding the preparation and consumption of food define minorities within a population?  The question receives fascinating and multifaceted answers in this book, which considers a smorgasbord of dishes that sustain group identity and often help to bridge inter-group barriers.The essays explore the symbolic meaning of shared foodways in interpreting inter- and intra-group behavior, with attention to theoretical problems and the implications of foodways research for public policy.  Topics receiving rewarding analysis in this volume include food festivals, modes of food preparation, meal cycles, seasonal celebrations, nutrition education, and the government's inattention to ethnic customs in forumlating its food policies.

More than thirty years after its original publication, V. O. Key's classic remains the most influential book on its subject. Its author, one of the nation's most astute observers, drew on more than five hundred interviews with Southerners to illuminate the political process in the South and in the nation.Key's book explains party alignments within states, internal factional competition, and the influence of the South upon Washington. It also probes the nature of the electorate, voting restrictions, and political operating procedures. This reprint of the original edition includes a new introduction by Alexander Heard and a profile of the author by William C. Havard.