The Rain Barrel: The Interstices of Race, Class, and Religion in North Carolina.

The creative component of the dissertation is The Rain Barrel, a novel set in the mountains of western North Carolina near the city of Asheville. The novel, which takes place in the mid-1980s with occasional flashbacks to earlier decades, investigates the intersection of charismatic Pentecostalism and folk tradition and how these seemingly disparate cultural practices inform the belief systems of the people who reside in isolated, mountain communities. I consider the ways in which these old-time views are challenged and often destroyed by the problems inherent to a more contemporary America that does not realize the historical boundaries imposed by region and culture. The critical component of the dissertation focuses on the literature of Charles W. Chesnutt and Thomas Wolfe and the ways in which these two authors from opposite sides of the state of North Carolina fictionally represent the cultural and political climates of their respective regions between the defining years of Reconstruction and the Great Depression.