Environmental Urgency: Apocalyptic Undercurrents In Appalachian Literature, Including All Places Thou: An Experimental Novella

Apocalyptic imagery and rhetoric appears across a variety of Appalachian literature and literature with Appalachian settings; however, comparatively little scholarly attention has been dedicated to exploring this trend, despite its provocative ecological implications. Using an ecocritical lens, I will first examine the apocalyptic undercurrent in Appalachian literature by analyzing its thematic significance to Ann Pancake's Strange as this Weather Has Been (2007) and Louise McNeill's Paradox Hill: From Appalachia to Lunar Shore (1972). I will then apply original narrative, verse, and selected artwork to a creative examination of these same thematic and symbolic trends. Ultimately, both critical and creative methodologies will indicate that apocalypticism - particularly in its contextualization of crisis in past, present, and future - provides a way for Appalachian literature to negotiate the ecological destruction and exploitation so prevalent in many parts of the region.