Civic Research
Considering Place
In the Appalachian Center for Civic Life, we consider place to be a complex, dynamic process involving three interrelated and equally important components: the natural environment, the built environment, and the human social and cultural history. We are committed to preserving the history of Southwest Virginia and the larger region surrounding Emory & Henry. We are also committed to recognizing the full breadth of that history, including the conflicts and contradictions. We are further committed to equipping a citizenry for and of this place. As part of this work, our students are engaged in multiple long-term projects to preserve and tell the stories that might otherwise remain unheard, thus offering a fuller, richer understanding of this place and its people.
A Remembrance
A Remembrance is the initial memorial to those enslaved and free persons who labored at Emory & Henry from its founding in 1836 through 1865.
A Remembrance is an act of recovery, offering the first efforts to memorialize by name persons who built Emory & Henry, calling us into honest reflection on our shared history.
View A Remembrance through the Watershed Project
To view the recording of the A Remembrance event, October 17, 2023
The Watershed Project
The Watershed Project includes a wide range of voices and ideas that help to build a more expansive civic memory and a more viable future, one rooted in democratic civic practices that improve the quality of life for all persons in Southwest Virginia.
Understanding that many approaches and many voices are required to tell the truths of a place and its people, The Watershed Project uses photographs, interactive maps, diagrams, oral histories, original documents, and videos to tell honest stories of Southwest Virginia. Challenging long-held perceptions and enlarging what we know of our histories, The Watershed Project also tells new stories and offers new possibilities for our future in Southwest Virginia.
The Appalachian Center for Civic Life Digital Archives
The Appalachian Center for Civic Life Digital Archives is a treasury of historical resources available to anyone interested in exploring more about the people and places of Southwest Virginia. Included in the archives are the account books, daybooks, student registers, subscription lists, catalogues, and other records of Emory & Henry College beginning in 1835. All of the digitized recordings, transcripts, and photographs from the Appalachian Oral History Project are available in these archives. Also available in the ACCL Digital Archives are the records of several Black congregations from across Southwest Virginia, store and farm records, and collections of letters. Within these archives are materials dating from the early 1770s through the present.
A significant portion of the ACCL Digital Archives is from the holdings of the Wilderness Road Regional Museum in Newbern, Pulaski County, Virginia. The Appalachian Center for Civic Life is indebted to the Board of Directors of the Wilderness Road Regional Museum for the many years of our collaboration and the ways that this collaboration has significantly enriched student learning about Southwest Virginia.
Explore the ACCL Digital Archives
Appalachian Oral History Project
The Appalachian Oral History Project (AOHP) was begun in 1973 and developed through a consortium involving Emory & Henry College, Appalachian State University, Alice Lloyd College, and Lees Junior College, now known as Hazard County Community College. Over the course of many years, students, faculty, and community members conducted and recorded personal interviews with thousands of citizens across the region.
Appalachian Oral History Project
Student Reflections
The work of the Appalachian Center for Civic Life and the Interdisciplinary Program in Civic Innovation are committed to the founding values that every person has within them the gifts and talents to make a difference in the lives of their neighbors and they can start this work now. We also believe that if that is true of people, it is also true of places. Every place has the potential to be a safe, healthy, and good place for all of its people. Every day in The Watershed Project, these values have shaped and guided our work with Emory & Henry students.
The vast majority of everything you will see and learn in the Watershed Project and in the Appalachian Center for Civic Life Digital Archives is the result of student work, student creativity, and students’ vision.
Students reflect on the significance of their involvement in The Watershed Project.