We welcome proposals for papers or media presentations in any field of American Studies and related disciplines. Proposals on the history, literature, and culture of the Upper South are especially encouraged. Those interested in participating may submit a one-page proposal or abstract and a brief vita to:

Approximately sixty members attended the April 16-17 meeting at Shaker Village, Pleasant Hill, Kentucky.

Martha Billips Turner (Transylvania University), "Appalachian Otherness: Lee Smith's Oral History." Smith's novel reveals her deep understanding of the stereotypes of Appalachian otherness and exposes their limitations, whether manifested in romantic or derogatory characterizations of the region's inhabitants.

Betsy Brinson (Kentucky Oral History Commission), "Heralds of Freedom: Kentucky Women in the Civil Rights Struggle, 1930-1970." Interviews with 25 women-leaders in organizations like CORE, NAACP, and the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights-generated the following profile: single and/or recently married college educated women who risked and endured arrest, job loss, FBI surveillance, harassment and intimidation to advance the civil rights cause.

Vivian G. Fryd (Vanderbilt University), "Nashville Battle Monument: Symbol of National Reconciliation and Peace." Constructed in 1927 to memorialize three wars, the monument became a vehicle for Southern conservatives-male and female-to oppose the growing status of the New Woman and to glorify instead the old-fashioned Cult of True Womanhood that promoted piety, duty to family and nation, and education.

Carole S. Bucy (Volunteer State Community College), "Sources of Kentucky and Tennessee History: The Draper Papers." Documents collected over a 50-year period by Lyman Copeland Draper between 1835 and 1891 constitute the first great manuscript collection of the early westward movement, covering the settlement of the West between 1740 and 1830. The papers are a rich source for scholarship on early Kentucky and Tennessee history as well as a major source for much of the recent scholarship on American Indians. Their location in the state of Wisconsin is a continuing source of controversy.

James E. Block (DePaul University), "Panic in the Republican Wilderness: Robert M. Bird, Early National Literature and the Crisis of Liberation." The crisis provoked by the terrifying journey into the boundless wilderness of the new republic is represented in much early American literature by a pattern of release, panic, and return, as exemplified in Bird's Nick of the Woods.

John Butler (Austin Peay State University), "Marketing the Merry Oldsmobile in the MidSouth." The Olds Motor Works jumped ahead of its competitors in the early years of the 20^th century by establishing a dealer organization, favorably comparing the moderately priced Oldsmobile to its nearest competitor (the horse and buggy), and providing proof of performance (in 1903 the Knoxville dealer drove an Olds from Knoxville to Chattanooga in under ten hours).

Steven Weisenburger (University of Kentucky), "Margaret Garner, Beloved, and Legend-Making." The true story of Margaret Garner, the northern Kentucky slave who escaped, was recaptured, and attempted to kill her children rather than see them returned to slavery.

David E. Magill (University of Kentucky), "The Pleasure(s) and Power(s) of Television: Or, Can Cartoons Change the World?" In The Simpsons the satiric message is often undercut by audiences focused on the pleasure of commodification or identification. The contradictory desires of producers and audiences lead to a diffusion of the show's satire as the viewers create their own spaces of resistance within and against the show's discourse.

Arthur Wrobel (University of Kentucky), "The White, Black, Town, and Country Families in Antebellum Kentucky." Robert Wickliffe was perhaps Kentucky's largest slaveholder. The Wickliffe-Preston Papers, housed in the UK Rare Book Room, provide a melancholy record of the lives of slaveholders and slaves: day-to-day treatment and medical care dictated by concern for a valuable commodity; the ineffectual resistance of slaves to their condition; white concerns about escapes, fears of black uprisings, and soul-searching over the morality of the institution.

Michael T. Gavin (The Farm Building Company), "German American Log Houses of Lawrence County, Tennessee." Vernacular buildings occur across the length and breadth of Tennessee. Whether of log, frame, brick, or stone, many of them share some of the same features, and even to the trained eye sometimes look very much alike. Although the German American log house appears to be similar to many of its neighbors, its unique characteristics (notably the use of cantilevered logs to support the front porch and rear shed) warrant its establishment as a separate type.

Carol Crowe Carraco (Western Kentucky University), "Life and Culture in Antebellum Southcentral Kentucky as Seen in the Reflections of Silverware." Although the Bluegrass region had more silversmiths, the state's southcentral area's artisans enjoyed enviable reputations before the Civil War. Artifacts, letters, diaries, advertisements, inventories, wills, deeds, court cases and other records enable a look at life in antebellum southcentral Kentucky as reflected by the work of almost two dozen silversmiths.

Tycho de Boer (Vanderbilt University), "The Big Ballad Jamboree: Donald Davidson and the Southern Folk." Drawing from both history and folklore, especially folk music, Davidson created for himself and other embattled traditionalists a myth of Southern history and culture as the last stronghold of an organic, communal, agrarian way of life that faced annihilation by the onslaught of modernity. Although Davidson is viewed by historians as the least relevant of the Agrarians, his vision of the South as a distinct, traditional culture seems to have survived the passage of time, particularly among defenders of a unique Southern identity.

Judith Hatchett (Midway College), "All the King's Men Today." Its penetrating analysis of the balancing act between the idealism and corruption of political life that continues to attract and repel Americans is the key to the enduring fascination of Warren's novel. In addition, All the King's Men hauntingly depicts an earlier South, before air conditioning, instant communi-cation, and televised news reports.

Border States editors Ellen Donovan and Mary Hoffschwelle are soliciting manuscripts for the first issue of the new millenium (vol. 13, publication date 2001). If you have recently delivered a paper at a KTASA meeting, or if you are working on a project that focuses on the mid-South region, please consider submitting it for publication to either editor:

Border States Vol. 12 was distributed at the 1999 meeting. Copies are available from the editors. The complete text of volumes 10-12 and parts of volumes 8-9 are on the Web at

(Note: In accordance with an ASA Regional Chapters Committee resolution, KTASA members in 1998 authorized the addition of a graduate student representative to the board of officers and elected David Magill, a PhD candidate at the University of Kentucky, to the office at the 1999 meeting.)

John G. Cawelti (University of Kentucky) will retire from UK at the end of spring semester 2000. He has recently published an expanded and revised version of his pioneering popular culture study under the title The Six-Gun Mystique Sequel (Bowling Green 1998) and is working on revisions and new essays for a collection of his essays.

Pam Warford (Georgetown College) read a paper at last summer's Conference on American Studies at Dartmouth College. Prof. Warford was one of 45 invited participants at the conference, which focused on the future of inter- and multidisciplinary studies.

Chad Berry (Maryville College) is the author of Southern Migrants, Northern Exiles, a social history of southern white out-migration to the Midwest, scheduled for January 2000 publication by University of Illinois Press.

Charles Wolfe's (MTSU) A Good Natured Riot, about the early days of the Grand Old Opry, has won the Ralph Gleason Award as one of the best books about popular music published in 1999.

Charles Maland (UT Knoxville) appeared on the History Channel's "Movies in Time" series last spring and summer discussing Sydney Pollack's 1969 film, They Shoot Horses, Don't They? And John Ford's classic 1956 Western, The Searchers.

Michael Dunne (MTSU) has written the introductory chapter, "The Study of Popular Culture" for the upcoming Handbook of American Popular Culture, 3^rd ed. Sara Dunne (MTSU) is writing the chapter on "Foodways" for the same volume. Michael and Sara Dunne are beginning their second three-year term as co-editors of Studies in Popular Culture.