Health disparities that cannot be fully explained by socio-behavioral factors persist in the Central Appalachian region of the United States. A review of available studies of environmental impacts on Appalachian health and analysis of recent public data indicates that while disparities exist, most studies of local environmental quality focus on the preservation of nonhuman biodiversity rather than on effects on human health. The limited public health studies available focus primarily on the impacts of coal mining and do not measure personal exposure, constraining the ability to identify causal relationships between environmental conditions and public health. Future efforts must engage community members in examining all potential sources of environmental health disparities to identify effective potential interventions.

This book demonstrates the value of using fan mail and online customer reviews to determine what meanings readers made of popular fictions set in Appalachia. Employing the methodological innovation of “reception geographies,” the book examines readers' testimonials alongside maps of their migrations in order to assess the ways in which their geographic movements and affiliations influenced their imagined geographies of Appalachia as a haven from modernity and postmodernity. The book argues that regional fiction served three functions for U.S. readers in multiple eras: it produced regions as authentic places, enabled readers' construction of identity and belonging; and facilitated the circulation of power across geographic scales. The book illustrates the crucial role played by mobile readers—regional elites, out-migrants and in-migrants, tourists, and missionaries—in constructing an Authentic Appalachia. For all fans, but for mobile readers in particular, Appalachia represented what they believed to be the nation's roots in “pioneer” white agrarian society and held out the tantalizing promise of a harmonious and rooted way of life. Appalachian-set best sellers stimulated the formation of a regional identity that critiqued the emotional costs of upward mobility, soothed white readers' concerns about lack of identity and belonging, and fostered readers' attachments to place in a highly mobile society that belittled rural locales. The book cautions that popular fiction's pastoral versions of Appalachia may have romanticized whiteness, glorified white American nationalism, and reinforced readers' imagination of primitive peoples the world over as in need of guidance from well-to-do Americans.

In this article, we offer a historiographical overview of major scholarly and political delineations of Appalachia from 1895 to the present alongside an online component that allows for an extensive virtual collection of historical maps as well as greater dynamism for user exploration.

This article describes a collaboration among a group of university faculty, undergraduate students, local governments, local residents, and U.S. Army staff to address long-standing concerns about the environmental health effects of an Army ammunition plant. The authors describe community-responsive scientific pilot studies that examined potential environmental contamination and a related undergraduate research course that documented residents’ concerns, contextualized those concerns, and developed recommendations. We make a case for the value of resource-intensive university–community partnerships that promote the production of knowledge through collaborations across disciplinary paradigms (natural/physical sciences, social sciences, health sciences, and humanities) in response to questions raised by local residents. Our experience also suggests that enacting this type of research through a university class may help promote researchers’ adoption of “epistemological pluralism”, and thereby facilitate the movement of a study from being “multidisciplinary” to “transdisciplinary”.