Lessons from "Take Me Home, Country Roads"
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A01=Sarah L. Morris
Aaron Copeland
Affilachian
Almost Heaven
Anthem
Appalachia
Appalachian
Appalachian Mountains
Appalachian otherness
Appalachian Spring
Appalachian Tourism
Appalachian Volunteers
AppalAsian
Author_Sarah L. Morris
back to the land movement
back to the landers
belonging
Bill Danoff
Category=AVA
Category=CFG
Category=JBSL
Country Roads
Country Roads Take Me Home
Covid
Covid-19
displacement
Donald Trump
entrainment
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_dictionaries-language-reference
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_music
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
extraction
folk ballads
folk music
folklore
folklorist
Glamor Shots
Goldenseal
Harpers Ferry
Hiraeth
home
Homecoming
homesteaders
identity
identity performance
identity performances
identity rhetoric
Jefferson's Rock
Joe Manchin
John Denver
MAGA
marketing
meme
memes
migration
Morgantown WV
Mountain Mama
Mountain Mamas
Mountain Mamas Political Action Committee
Mountaineer
mountaineer culture in fiction
Mountaineer Nation
musical revival
negativity
outmigration
pandemic
pedagogy
place
placework
placeworld
regional anthem
road songs
sports teams
Taffy Nivert
Take Me Home
Take Me Home Country Roads
tellability
tellable narrative
The West Virginia Hills
This Is My West Virginia
tourism
Travis Stimeling
tweets
untellable stories
West Virginia
West Virginia Chose Me
West Virginia Tourism
West Virginia University
WVU
Product details
- ISBN 9781959000549
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 127 x 203mm
- Publication Date: 01 Oct 2025
- Publisher: West Virginia University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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You may have heard it at a football game, in an advertisement, or on the radio on a road trip far from home. You may have sung along on a rooftop in Thailand, at Oktoberfest in Belgium, or with a Japanese cover band. It may have moved you to dance at a wedding or cry at a funeral. Regardless of where it plays, the song “Take Me Home, Country Roads” is ubiquitous, unmistakable, universal. Written and recorded by Bill Danoff, Taffy Nivert, and John Denver in 1971, the song continues to resonate across cultures and audiences, carrying meaning beyond naming and inviting transformation for a range of rhetorical purposes in nearly 300 recorded English versions and in more than 20 languages.
This book examines “Country Roads” as it illuminates a universal sense of belonging to place even as it obscures the literality of the place it names. In examining “Country Roads” as anthem, text, artifact, and rhetoric, this work untangles ideas related to place, belonging, identity, and pedagogy. Sarah L. Morris uses the Welsh term hiraeth, which is an existential longing for an idealized, sometimes imaginary home, as a governing framework for this work. She explores the song in various contexts, such as how it pertains to West Virginia geography and heritage and the diversity of these beliefs, external perceptions of the state, concepts of home and belonging, and the song as a phenomenon across different media platforms. “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” while being about West Virginia, has registered as a global phenomenon.
This book examines “Country Roads” as it illuminates a universal sense of belonging to place even as it obscures the literality of the place it names. In examining “Country Roads” as anthem, text, artifact, and rhetoric, this work untangles ideas related to place, belonging, identity, and pedagogy. Sarah L. Morris uses the Welsh term hiraeth, which is an existential longing for an idealized, sometimes imaginary home, as a governing framework for this work. She explores the song in various contexts, such as how it pertains to West Virginia geography and heritage and the diversity of these beliefs, external perceptions of the state, concepts of home and belonging, and the song as a phenomenon across different media platforms. “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” while being about West Virginia, has registered as a global phenomenon.
Sarah L. Morris is assistant professor in the department of English and coordinator of undergraduate writing at West Virginia University. She is also co-director of WVU’s National Writing Project. This is her first book.
