Leveraging High-Impact Practices to Create and Enhance Access to the Appalachia of Emma Bell Miles

This article appeared in the Volume 5, Issue 1 Spring/Summer 2024 issue of the Appalachian Curator. Click here to view a PDF of the full issue.

By Molly Copeland and Carolyn Runyon

Introduction

Archivists in the Special Collections unit of the Library at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC) document the history of the university, Chattanooga, and the Tennessee Valley, including source materials and analyses that examine the cultural heritage of Southern Appalachia as seen through the lens of Emma Bell Miles. Miles was an artist, writer, and naturalist whose fiction, poems, and paintings reflect deep knowledge and appreciation for the distinct culture and ecology of Southern Appalachia. As part of an academic library responsible for contributing to the educational mission of the University, archivists employ High-Impact Practices (HIPs) to build new content and enhance use of existing resources. HIPs are evidence-based educational strategies that include experiential pedagogies such as internships, undergraduate research, writing intensive courses, and community-based learning (American Association of Colleges and Universities, n.d.). By leveraging HIPs, archivists collaborate with students on projects to enhance the existing archival record and build new content to document the life and legacy of Emma Bell Miles.

Background

Emma Bell Miles (1879-1919) was a long-time resident of Walden’s Ridge on Signal Mountain, located along Tennessee’s Cumberland Plateau and overlooking Chattanooga. Beginning in 1904, Miles regularly published her short stories and poems in national magazines as well as local Chattanooga newspapers. Her article “Some Real American Music,” published in Harper’s Monthly in 1904, is one of the earliest articles in a popular magazine to write appreciatively about Appalachian folk music. The article also formed the basis for a chapter in her later book, The Spirit of the Mountains (1905), which was a blend of short stories, travel narrative, personal memoir, and cultural analysis of Southern Appalachian life. Miles’ daughter, Jean, donated the Jean Miles Catino and Emma Bell Miles papers to UTC in 2000 and archivists in Special Collections processed and described the collection soon after (Catino and Miles, n.d.). Since 2014, archivists have been working with students to amplify visibility of the archival collection through an internship, undergraduate research project, capstone, and community-based learning. These collaborations with students have yielded a digital collection, lesson plans, a thesis, and oral histories that have enhanced access to and understanding of Miles’ unique perspective on mountain life.

 

Lookout Mountain and tree landscape painting. Courtesy of University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Special Collections. (Miles, n.d.-a)

Internship

Special Collections began enhancing access to materials in the Jean Miles Catino and Emma Bell Miles papers in 2014 as the result of an internship that offered a Master of Science in Information Sciences (MSIS) candidate from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK) direct experience digitizing and authoring digital object metadata for Miles’ letters, drawings, paintings, and sketches. The intern, Crystal Kile, laid the foundation for the Emma Bell Miles Southern Appalachia art, correspondence, and journals digital collection by selecting, describing, and digitizing materials in their 150-hour internship in Special Collections (University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Special Collections, n.d.). Kile proposed the project, met weekly with an archivist to review progress, and received academic credit for successful completion of the internship. Kile used national and local descriptive standards, controlled vocabularies, and software commonly used by Libraries, Archives, and Museums (LAMs) including Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS), Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT) terms, Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), ArchivesSpace, and CONTENTdm. Archivists provided the intern with direct experience producing a digital collection from start to finish and mentorship throughout the 12-week endeavor while widening access to parts of the Jean Miles Catino and Emma Bell Miles papers. The digital access provided by the internship laid the groundwork for future students to critically engage with and supplement Miles’ original work.

 

“The Old House Dreams,” from a hand painted edition of Chords from a Dulcimore. Courtesy of University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Special Collections. (Miles, 1912).

Undergraduate Research

Online availability of Emma Bell Miles’ work through the digital collection enabled opportunities for students to engage with her poetry and writings at undergraduate, as well as secondary educational levels. In partnership with the Office of Undergraduate Research and Create Endeavor (URaCE), archivists in Special Collections supported a year-long undergraduate research project during the 2020-2021 academic year. Relying on the diaries, poems, newspaper column articles, and artwork by Emma Bell Miles available from Special Collections, UTC undergraduate researcher Alexandra Boggs developed two lesson plans and workbooks. Boggs, who was studying English and Education at the time, authored the lesson plans with accompanying recorded presentations, slide decks, and handouts intended to satisfy English Language Arts standards for secondary learners set by the Tennessee Department of Education (Tennessee Department of Education, n.d.).

Entitled Point of View Study using the Poetry of Emma Bell Miles and Henry David Thoreau and Figurative Language Study Using the Poetry of Emma Bell Miles and Henry David Thoreau, the lesson plans published in the institutional repository are designed for students at the grades 9-12 level and put Miles in conversation with one of her influences and fellow writer-naturalist, Henry David Thoreau (Boggs 2021a; 2021b). Boggs featured content already published online in the Emma Bell Miles Southern Appalachia art, correspondence, and journals digital collection for two reasons: all material is freely available to the educators who may use the lesson plans and it was easier and safer to rely on online content during the remote work conditions at height of the global COVID-19 pandemic during the 2020-2021 academic year. The undergraduate researcher connected key learning competencies to unique primary sources while Special Collections added instructional support materials for secondary education to increase use of the repository’s holdings.

Capstone Project

In 2022, UTC undergraduate students Dalton Burks and Alyssa Neuhoff conducted three interviews with scholars of Emma Bell Miles. Originally conceived as part of a course assignment, Burks used the interviews to inform her honors thesis, Social Change through Rhetorical Action: Case Studies of Two Tennessee Women in the Archives (Burks 2022). Burks relied on the foundational work established by Kile’s 2014 internship not only to author a thesis, a culmination of their educational experiences at UTC, but to contribute to the archival record by working with Special Collections to record the interviews and obtain permissions to publish them online. By collaborating with interviewees and Special Collections, Burks and Neuhoff learned new processes and how to critique many interpretations of Emma Bell Miles’ rhetorical strategies. Archivists published the interviews conducted by Burks and Neuhoff, along with their transcripts, as part of the existing Emma Bell Miles Southern Appalachia art, correspondence, and journals digital collection.

Community-Based Learning

In 2022, archivists in Special Collections supported the work of community partner, McCoy Farm and Gardens, by mentoring a community-based learning opportunity for a UTC undergraduate student. McCoy Farm and Gardens is a nonprofit organization located on Signal Mountain that preserves the 19th century home and grounds of United States Senator Nathan L. Bachman and his descendants and celebrates the history and cultural heritage of the historic mountain community of Walden, Tennessee. The grounds include the foundation of Emma Bell Miles’ childhood home and residents of Walden remember Miles’ influence.

At the beginning of the collaboration, archivists and student, Zane Davis, met with the Executive Director and Board members of McCoy Farm and Gardens to offer a solution to the nonprofit’s challenge of preserving the town of Walden’s memories about the farm. They determined that Special Collections would provide the technology and infrastructure to preserve interviews conducted by members of the Board about the history of the property and the lives of the Bachman and McCoy families who had lived there. Davis attended each interview, setting up the equipment and ensuring that the digital files were properly transferred to Special Collections’ digital preservation environment. Davis also transcribed and captioned several of the interviews. By including the student in initial meetings that established the problem, archivists worked with the undergraduate History major to apply the student’s knowledge of historical research methods to solve a real-world challenge and give back to the community. Special Collections established a relationship with a community partner and published the McCoy Farm and Gardens oral histories digital collection, which records the history of mining and bootlegging on the ridge, mountain culture, and memories of Emma Bell Miles (University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Special Collections and McCoy Farm and Gardens, n.d.).

Conclusion

Since 2014, archivists have utilized a variety of HIPs to support student interns, researchers, writers, and problem-solvers who have helped Special Collections expand and enrich the contextual and supplemental resources about Emma Bell Miles. By embracing HIPs, Special Collections has grown the knowledge commons on an important Appalachian artist and scholar while actively contributing to the university’s values and mission to actively engage students by nurturing a culture of creativity, scholarship, and innovation and engaging with our community.

Acknowledgements

Special Collections is not able to achieve these results without the efforts and talents of many contributors and supporters. In particular, the authors extend their gratitude to Crystal Kile, Alexandra Boggs, Dalton Burks, Alyssa Neuhoff, and Zane Davis for their energy and dedication to building and enriching access to resources that document the incredible life and work of Emma Bell Miles. They also thank the UTC Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Endeavor (URaCE) for funding undergraduate research in the humanities in Special Collections.

References

American Association of Colleges and Universities. n.d. “High-Impact Practices.” American Association of Colleges and Universities. Accessed June 7, 2022. https://www.aacu.org/trending-topics/high-impact.

Boggs, Alexandra. 2021a. “Figurative Language Study Using the Poetry of Emma Bell Miles and Henry David Thoreau Lesson Plan and Workbooks.” Institutional Repository. University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Scholar. April 2021. https://scholar.utc.edu/primary-source-instructional-materials/8/.

———. 2021b. “Point of View Study Using the Poetry of Emma Bell Miles and Henry David Thoreau Lesson Plan.” Institutional Repository. University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Scholar. January 2021. https://scholar.utc.edu/primary-source-instructional-materials/9/.

Catino, Jean Miles, and Emma Bell Miles. n.d. “Jean Miles Catino and Emma Bell Miles Papers.” University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Finding Aids. Accessed June 4, 2023. https://findingaids.utc.edu/repositories/2/resources/23.

Miles, Emma Bell. 1879. Old Edwards Place Drawing. MS-078-02-05-02. University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Special Collections. https://digital-collections.library.utc.edu/digital/collection/p16877coll6/id/92/.

———. 1900. On Martin’s Red Bank Berry Farm Drawing. MS-078-02-05-05. University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Special Collections. https://digital-collections.library.utc.edu/digital/collection/p16877coll6/id/95/.

———. 1912. “Chords from a Dulcimore.” Chapbook. Chattanooga, Tennessee. University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Special Collections. https://digital-collections.library.utc.edu/digital/collection/p16877coll6/id/183/.

———. n.d.-a. Lookout Mountain and Tree Landscape Painting. MS-078-02-03-05. University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Special Collections. Accessed June 4, 2024. https://digital-collections.library.utc.edu/digital/collection/p16877coll6/id/75/.

———. n.d.-b. Waterfall Landscape Oil Painting Postcard. MS-078-02-06-02. University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Special Collections. Accessed June 4, 2024. https://digital-collections.library.utc.edu/digital/collection/p16877coll6/id/127/.

Tennessee Department of Education. n.d. “English Language Arts.” Tennessee State Government. Accessed June 4, 2024. https://www.tn.gov/education/districts/academic-standards/english-language-arts-standards.html.

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Special Collections. n.d. “Emma Bell Miles Southern Appalachia Art, Correspondence, and Journals.” Digital Library. University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Digital Collections. Accessed June 4, 2023. https://digital-collections.library.utc.edu/digital/collection/p16877coll6.

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Special Collections and McCoy Farm and Gardens. n.d. “McCoy Farm and Gardens Oral Histories.” Digital Library. University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Digital Collections. Accessed June 4, 2023. https://digital-collections.library.utc.edu/digital/collection/p16877coll44.

Molly Copeland is Manuscripts Archivist and Carolyn Runyon is Director of Special Collections at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga