Coal Zoom | East Tennessee Hosts Art and Coal in Appalachia Lectures

East Tennessee Hosts Art and Coal in Appalachia Lectures

March 25, 2024 - “Art and Coal in Appalachia” is the focus of the East Tennessee State University’s April 3 Evening of Health, Wellness and the Arts.

Held at ETSU’s James and Nellie Brinkley Center (formerly the Millennium Center), this free public event begins at 5:30 p.m. with a reception.

At 6 p.m. there will be music and a panel discussion featuring three notable scholars with expertise in the history of the coal industry and its influence on the art and health of the Appalachian region. It will also feature a Health Professional Student Art Display.

Panelists include ETSU professor Dr. Ted Olson, filmmaker Dr. Anne Lewis and epidemiologist Dr. David Blackley.

Olson will speak on the “History of Coal in Appalachia.” A professor in the ETSU Department of Appalachian Studies, Olson is a cultural historian, editor, poet, photographer and musician. For many years, he has taught courses exploring Appalachia’s complex cultural history, including “Coal Mining and Appalachia.” He is a prolific author and serves as book series editor for the Charles K. Wolfe Music Series published by the University of Tennessee Press.

“Film as a Voice for Social Change” will be addressed by Lewis, who has made documentary films since the 1970s. She was an assistant director and camerawoman for “Harlan County, USA,” an Academy Award-winning 1976 documentary covering the 1973 “Brookside Strike” in Harlan County, Kentucky. She has also won awards for her films “Fast Food Women” and “On Our Own Land.” Lewis is associated with Appalshop in Whitesburg, Kentucky, and is a professor of practice at the University of Texas-Austin.

Blackley, who will speak on “The Health Effects of Coal Mining,” works with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) in Morgantown, West Virginia. His early focus with NIOSH was on the epidemiology of coal workers’ pneumoconiosis, or “black lung,” and he led investigations identifying historically high levels of severe black lung among Appalachian coal miners. He has collaborated with the Zambian government to enhance respiratory health surveillance in that country’s mining workforce, and he deployed four times to Liberia and Sierra Leone during the Ebola crisis.

Music will be provided by ETSU’s Twin Taters, one of the student bands in the university’s Bluegrass, Old-Time and Roots Music Studies.