Patricia Duane Beaver papers

Dr. Patricia D. Beaver was Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for Appalachian Studies at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. She retired in 2013.

Dr. Beaver has conducted research in Appalachia and China, with particular interests in community, family, and public policy as well as issues related to gender, class, and ethnicity. She has taught courses in the Anthropology Department, many of which overlap with Appalachian Studies, Asian Studies and Women's Studies. She was project director of the Appalachian Land Ownership Study (discussed in Who Owns Appalachia, University Press of Kentucky 1983), co-editor with Burton Purrington of Cultural Adaptions to Mountain Environments (University of Georgia Press, 1984), author of Rural Community in the Appalachian South (Waveland, 1996), co-editor with Carol Hill of Cultural Diversity in the US South (forthcoming 1998, University of Georgia Press). Her recent research focuses on cultural and ethnic diversity in Appalachia, with attention to the African American and Jewish communities in Asheville, N.C., on Melungeon history and identity, and on rehistoricizing gender and ethnicity.

Her areas of research/interest are Appalachian culture, social organization, gender, cultural diversity, Chinese gender issues, contemporary culture, culture in the American South, impacts of public policy on rural families, gender and family organization, race and ethnicity; Appalachia, China.