Dr. Beth Campbell, an associate professor and chair in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at Appalachian State University’s Reich College of Education (RCOE), Dr. Luke Eric Lassiter, a professor of humanities and anthropology and director of the graduate humanities program at Marshall University, and Dr. Brian A. Hoey, a professor of anthropology and associate dean of the honors college at Marshall University, have been named the recipients of the Weatherford Award for nonfiction for their book I’m Afraid of That Water: A Collaborative Ethnography of a West Virginia Water Crisis.
The book documents the 2014 chemical spill in central West Virginia that contaminated the water of 300,000 citizens in a nine-county region and the aftermath of the event for the residents.
“This book sets a meaningful example from which community-engaged Appalachian studies scholars will draw much inspiration,” noted the Weatherford judges. “The book merged academic perspectives with community-based voices in an Appalachian exchange between folks with similar experiences in a crisis and Appalachian shared living.”
“Our hope in writing this book was that readers would gain a sense of what the experience of this mass contamination event was like for us, and how it changed us - albeit, in a broad range of ways,” said Campbell. “Receiving this award opens up a new hope for us: that we might now connect with larger and growing conversations about the public good and human necessity of universal access to clean, safe water.”
The award monies for this prize will be donated to the West Virginia Rivers Coalition, a nonprofit that serves as the statewide voice for water-based recreation and clean, drinkable rivers. The book’s royalties are also donated to the West Virginia Rivers Coalition.
Campbell earned a Ph.D. in English Composition and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, an M.A. in Folklore from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a dual B.A. in secondary education and United States history from State University of New York at Oneonta.
Prior to coming to App State, Campbell served as associate professor and program director of elementary and secondary education at Marshall University.
Campbell has an avid interest in collaborative research, community-university partnerships, and civic engagement. Her research focuses on the constitutive nature of collaborative research and writing, and especially how it works—through shared agency, shared commitment, and shared humanity—to make and remake those who engage it.
About the Award
The Weatherford Awards honor books deemed as best illuminating the challenges, personalities, and unique qualities of the Appalachian South. Granted by Berea College and the Appalachian Studies Association for 50 years, the awards commemorate the life and achievements of W.D. Weatherford Sr., a pioneer and leading figure in Appalachian development, youth work and race relations, and his son, Willis D. Weatherford Jr., Berea College’s sixth president.
The winner in the fiction category was The Prettiest Star by Carter Sickels, and the winner for poetry was All the Great Territories by Matthew Wimberly.
Beth Campbell
