Zada Komara: Consumerism, Progressivism, and Class Identity at 20th Century Company Coalmining Towns

This proposed oral history project seeks to investigate how families in Appalachian company coalmining towns negotiated their identities by consuming household material goods. Consumption will be connected to the influx of new mass-produced goods in coal towns, and to the strong reformer presence that sought to ‘bring’ the new working and middle classes into the modern era at the turn of the 20th century. I will collect interviews primarily from former women, immigrant, and African American residents and descendants from Jenkins and McRoberts, KY about their lived experiences of consumption, and the connection to class, race, and gendered identity in company coal towns.