Deviant Hollers: Queering Appalachian Ecologies for a Sustainable Future

by Zane McNeill (Editor), Rebecca Scott (Editor), Stephanie Foote (Foreword by)

Overview

Deviant Hollers: Queering Appalachian Ecologies for a Sustainable Future uses the lens of queer ecologies to explore environmental destruction in Appalachia while mapping out alternative futures that follow from critical queer perspectives on the United States' exploitation of the land. With essays by Lis Regula, Jessica Cory, Chet Pancake, Tijah Bumgarner, MJ Eckhouse, and other essential thinkers, this collection brings to light both emergent and long-standing marginalized perspectives that give renewed energy to the struggle for a sustainable future. A new and valuable contribution to the field of Appalachian studies, rural queer studies, Indigenous studies, and ethnographic studies of the United States, Deviant Hollers presents a much-needed objection to the status quo of academic work, as well as to the American exceptionalism and white supremacy pervading US politics and the broader geopolitical climate. By focusing on queer critiques and acknowledging the status of Appalachia as a settler colony, Deviant Hollers offers new possibilities for a reimagined way of life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813199337
Publisher:	University Press of Kentucky
Publication date:	04/01/2024
Series:	Appalachian Futures: Black, Native, and Queer Voices
Pages:	246
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.59(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Zane McNeill is an independent scholar-activist from West Virginia who has published edited collections with PM Press, Routledge, and Lantern Publishing & Media. Rebecca R. Scott is associate professor of sociology at the University of Missouri, where she teaches classes on environmental justice, gender, and social theory. She is the author of Removing Mountains: Extracting Nature and Identity from the Appalachian Coalfields.

Table of Contents

Foreword, by Stephanie Foote
Introduction, by Rebecca Scott and Zane McNeill
1. Re-presenting the Narrative: Pursuing Stories Amidst Addiction, by Tijah Bumgarner
2. Intoxicated Subjects: Queer Bodies and Ecologies in 'Trumpalachia', by Rebecca-Eli M. Long and Zane McNeill
3. Queers Embracing Place in Appalachia: The Importance of Masculinities for Queer Acceptance, by Baker A. Rogers
4. Unsilencing Indigeneity: Appalachian Studies, Appalachian Ecologies, and the Continuation of Settler Colonialism, by Jessica Cory
5. It's Grandpa's Land: Settler Property, Heteropatriarchy and Environmental Disasters, by Kandice Grossman, Aaron Padgett, and Rebecca Scott
6. Edible Kent: Collaboration, Decentralization, and Sustainable Agriculture in Urban Food Systems, by Lis Regula and MJ Eckhouse
7. Arboreal Blockaders: "Queer/Trans Moments of Critical Appalachian Eco-Action", by Chet Pancake
8. Masculinities in the Decline of Coal: Queer Futures in the Appalachian Coalfields, by Gabe Schwartzmann
9. "I Fixed Up the Trees to Give Them Some New Life:": Queer Desire, Affect, and Ecology in the Work of LGBTQ+ Appalachian Artists, by Maxwell Cloe
Contributor Biographies

Editorial Reviews

"Centering a critique of settler colonialism, Deviant Hollers brilliantly envisions environmental politics away from the constraints of econormativity."

Heather Davis

"Pushing against narratives of the region that include only white, patriarchal, and heteronormative characterizations, the authors collected in Deviant Hollers hope to open up new spaces of possibility for Appalachia's future.... With its candor and nuance, Deviant Hollers makes a valuable addition to a growing body of literature that insists upon a thorough course correction to reductive regional stereotypes."

Emily Choate

For the reader newly interested in queerness, racialization(s), the impacts of colonization, the import of nonhumans, and these ideas' various overlaps with Appalachian ecologies, then this collection of essays could readily become a map of sorts to navigate the various intersections and ways to meander through such complexities.

Caleb Pendygraft

"An expansive and evocative rethinking of Appalachian studies. Beyond challenging metronormative narratives of queer urban-ness or presenting Appalachian cultures and geographies as queered with regard to US national norms, the collection addresses how those dynamics are themselves enmeshed within ongoing histories of settler colonialism in which non-Indigenous Appalachians participate."

Mark Rifkin

"A rich collection of work that delightfully confounds typical narratives of what it means to be from, and live in, Appalachia by offering future possibilities for queer belonging, environmental justice, and liberation."

stef shuster