Centering Affrilachia: Expanding the Narrative of Appalachian Art and Visual Culture

The term “Affrilachia” was coined by Kentucky Poet Laureate and scholar Frank X Walker in 1991. As a concept, Affrilachia challenges histories that present a monolithic picture of Appalachia grounded in Anglo and Scots-Irish heritage. Indeed, the first African Americans were trafficked to Appalachia in the mid-1500s as slaves to Spanish and French colonists. African Americans would go on to play an influential role in Appalachian culture and society, contributing to regional music, oral history and folk art from their arrival to the present. In response to the erasure of these histories, Frank X Walker founded the Affrilachian Poets and The Affrilachian Journal of Arts and Culture inviting scholarship and shedding light on the deep roots of Black cultural production throughout Appalachia. The term, in Walker’s words, insists on the recognition “that people and artists of color are part of the past and present of the multi-state Appalachian region extending from northern Mississippi to southern New York.” This panel calls for papers that explore the visual culture and artistic production associated with Affrilachia. Papers may explore a wide range of artistic practices and/or visual culture themes including but not limited to the history of documentary practices addressing Affrilachia and the artistic and cultural contributions by African American artists and communities across Appalachia from the colonial period to the present.