The Fall 2023 issue of the Journal of Appalachian Studies features three articles with innovative perspectives on questions of perennial interest to the region. The first, entitled “Animalizing Appalachia: A Critical Animal Studies Analysis of Early Sociological Surveys of Southern Appalachia” by Corey Lee Wrenn, uses an animal-centric lens to re-examine three early sociological accounts of Appalachia: George E. Vincent's “A Retarded Frontier,” which came out in the American Journal of Sociology in 1898; John C. Campbell's Southern Highlander and His Homeland, which was published in 1921; and Mandel Sherman and Thomas R. Henry's Hollow Folk from 1933. Whereas the cultural and economic marginalization of Appalachian people in these texts has been frequently the object of analysis, the critical animal studies lens Wrenn applies to these texts deconstructs both social hierarchies and the scientific classifications that bolster them, which were produced in these early examples of social science. The...

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