Field School 2018: West Virginia Coalfields

I’ve been looking forward to this day for over a year.

We arrived to South Charleston to a lovely AirBnB late yesterday afternoon. Today we travel to Mingo County to interview mining families at the Matewan Union Hall.  The ten students who are with me: graduate students from Mason’s Folklore Studies Program, Anthropology Program and Global Affairs program, will be documenting local culture and conducting oral history interviews in Mingo, Logan and Kanawha Counties. We’ll visit the Mine Wars Museum, travel to the depths of the Beckley Exhibition Mine, and spend the weekend at the Vandalia Gathering.

I’ll be posting pictures and updates throughout the week.