From the Editors

Anyone involved in academic publishing understands—to some extent—the time needed to solicit, compile, and edit a range of voices to create something worthwhile that holds together. To do so in collaboration as editors adds a layer of complexity. Here, we see that complexity pays off as Jasper Waugh-Quasebarth and Zada Komara invite multiple perspectives on material culture in Appalachian society into conversation in this special issue of the Journal of Appalachian Studies. It is an honor to be a small part of this work, carried out by the co-editors, whose introduction follows. I invite you, as you read, to contextualize the work both visible and credited and behind the scenes and anonymous. The writers and editors whose work appears here depend upon the invisible labor of peer reviewers across disciplines; we are grateful for the peer-review evaluations because they make publications like this special issue possible and durable. Meredith McCarroll, editor Journal of Appalachian StudiesIn 2018, at the Appalachian Studies Association annual conference in Cincinnati, we convened a dual session of interdisciplinary scholars titled “Materiality and Material Culture in Appalachia.” Researchers and scholars in linguistics, folklore, architecture, archaeology, historic preservation, legal studies, sociology, and literature all provided nuanced and innovative viewpoints on the study of material culture and materiality in the Appalachian context, demonstrating the contributions Appalachian studies had to make to a global community of scholars taking up questions related to environment, economy, politics, and culture. Zada Komara followed up by chairing a session of archaeologists in 2020, signaling the theoretical and applied contributions of archaeology to Appalachian studies. Although archaeologists frequently work in the Appalachian context in academic and contract positions, their work is underrepresented in our community of scholars.In both settings, we sought to broaden the umbrella of the scholarly pursuits of the Appalachian Studies Association as well as bring new theoretical insights from the world of material culture studies and materiality studies to our body of critical and activist-oriented scholarship. From the outset, we had planned to publish a collection of our papers, and it was our great pleasure to be offered to serve as co-editors of this special issue on material culture stemming from those initial conference panels.Material culture has a special place in Appalachian studies. Our material culture frequently stands in for us in national and global discourse, but it also makes us who we are in an everyday sense. It is our hope that this issue of JAS brings new understanding of how social and environmental life are co-constituted by people and the materials they surround themselves with, suggests how studying materiality and material culture can help us set the stakes of our scholarship and practice, and provides a starting point for future research and community engagement around material culture.Contributions to this special issue address these themes with diverse methods, analysis, and modes of representation. Ethnographers use linguistic analysis, visual sociology, and participant observation to discuss topics of work, culture, and belonging. Archaeologists analyze the material remanent of everyday objects to piece together place-based patterns of use in a larger economic tapestry. Scholars of the creation and curation of the arts think through the production and placement of art objects as generative pasts and futures. All these contributions bring unique, yet interrelated, perspectives and theoretical positions to the understanding of Appalachian material culture in the various ways it is created, deposited, exhibited, preserved, and disposed of.While our Appalachian communities continue to be a source of the extraction of materials, bodies, and livelihoods, we hope this special issue of JAS will provide fresh understandings of materiality to enjoin other efforts in the arts, sciences, humanities, and public practice. We wish to thank Rebecca R. Scott for her initial enthusiasm around the project, Ann E. Bryant, Mary K. Thomas, and Michael S. Martin for their efforts in production, and Meredith McCarroll for helping to bring us down the final stretches in her initial phase as editor of the Journal of Appalachian Studies. We are immensely grateful for the anonymous reviewers who gave compelling feedback—they are the unseen force that makes this journal what it is.Finally, we wish to dedicate this issue of JAS to our friend and classmate Tammy Clemons, who never stopped envisioning a new material and environmental future for our mountain communities. Jasper Waugh-Quasebarth, co-editor Old Dominion University Zada Komara, co-editor University of Kentucky