Sponsoring Literacy in Appalachia

Using Deborah Brandt’s theory of literacy sponsorship, this chapter examines newspaper editors’ efforts to cultivate an imagined community of readers. It illustrates the ways in which the editors taught, modeled, and regulated literacy via discussions of appropriate reading and writing practices. It also argues that advertisements for texts of all kinds debunk the idea of a textless Appalachia and discusses what the editors’ choices of advertisements suggest about how they imagined their audiences.