Storyweb: Storytime For Grownups

This week on StoryWeb: Helen Matthews Lewis’s book Living Social Justice in Appalachia. In honor of International Women’s Day, coming up this Wednesday, I want to pay tribute to one of the great teachers of my life, Helen Matthews Lewis. Known fondly as the mother or grandmother of Appalachian studies by the many people whose personal and professional lives she has touched, Helen – as always – modestly denies this title, saying instead that other leaders gave birth to and shaped the interdisciplinary movement. But as her colleague Stephen L. Fisher points out, “there is little question that her program at Clinch Valley College [in Virginia] served as the major catalyst for the current Appalachian studies movement and that no one has done more over the years to shape its direction than Helen.” For me, as for so many others, Helen set the standard for engaged scholarship, activist teaching, and pure regional enjoyment – whether that region is Appalachia or Wales or southern Africa. Helen weaves it all together: