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Gwen McNeill Ashburn, Ph.D. Chair of UNC Asheville’s Literature and Language Department, author Asheville, NC W: (828) 251-6410 gashburn@unca.edu
About Gwen McNeill Ashburn: Gwen McNeill Ashburn is Associate Professor of Literature and Language at UNC Asheville. She graduated from Queens College with a bachelor’s degree in English and from UNC Chapel Hill with a doctorate in Linguistics. Her doctoral research focused on the development of and variations of the English language. Dr. Ashburn has been published in “The International Journal of Psycho Linguistics,” “Kentucky English Bulletin,” “The Thomas Wolfe Review,” “The Companion to Southern Literature” and Reader’s Guide to Literature in English. Her recent publications focus on Sharyn McCrumb’s The Ballad of Frankie Silver in “Literature and Law” and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird in a volume for English teachers. She is a member of the National Council of Teachers of English, the Modern Language Association and the Appalachian Studies Association. Her interests include southern and Appalachian literature, linguistics, travel writing and women's history.
Carolina Mountains: Writers and Travelers
Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century writers and travelers such as Frederick Law Olmsted, Charles Dudley Warner, Constance Fenimore Woolson, Margaret Morley, and Christian Reid tell of the “Land of the Sky,” a destination for those seeking the strange, the sublime, and the soothing. These notable authors traveled in the Carolina Highlands and entertained their readers with accounts of beautiful, rugged mountains and sturdy, resourceful people. Though lapsing into “local color” and establishing stereotypes at times, their travel writing depicts an interesting, complex region, full of compelling characters and stories.
Program requirement: lectern
A Confluence of Remarkable Women
From the earliest settlers in western NC and the founding of Asheville, women have been instrumental in this area’s history, but few records of their achievements exist. Many women will remain anonymous, with their stories known only to their families at best. There are, however, a group of women who converged in the 1920s and 1930s whose achievements should be marked. They helped form Asheville into a distinctive Southern highlands community by establishing medical clinics, caring for the poor, founding community centers, raising money for the churches and schools, marching for equal rights, and integrating schools and hospitals. What a shame historical accounts of the region ignore their contributions, as if they had never been part of the stream of settlers in Asheville, living, working, and building a community. Dr. Gwen McNeill Ashburn’s program highlights the efforts and achievements of these women.
Program requirement: none
Mountain Women in Fiction: Working Without Nets
Eliza Gant is characterized in Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel as a stingy, hard-nosed businesswoman with little time for mothering the last of her nine children. Many mountain women like Wolfe’s mother Julia, on whom Gant was modeled, worked because they had to. Through feminism and fiction, readers can appreciate the difficult lives led by mountain women in the early twentieth century. Novels by Wilma Dykeman, John Ehle, Olive Tilford Dargon, Robert Morgan, Lee Smith, Fred Chappell, Silas House, and Denise Giardina, as well as Thomas Wolfe, portray women whose lives were far different from the stereotype of a Southern lady. Their works of fiction remind us of how mountain women worked and how work shaped their lives. Though fictional, their stories are important because they tell us of real mountain women who worked in mills and on farms, raised children and gardens, and fed families and animals—often alone and without any safety nets.
Program requirement: lectern
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