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Digital Teaching Collections (Special Collections)

This research guide highlights primary sources and research materials in Special Collections for English 102 students.
The following selected materials are multiple full digital collections in the University of Tennessee Special Collections repository and are intended to serve as jumping off points for further, more in depth research. For information on searching within these collections, please see the section on Navigating Digital Teaching Collections. 

Great Smoky Mountains/Appalachia Full Digital Collections

black and white artistic photograph of mount le cont taken in the winter. Mountain peaks are a snowy white, and a white mist lifts off the peaks blending into the cloudy sky.
Le Conte, December 1925. From the Thompson Brothers Photograph Collection.

From Pi Beta Phi to Arrowmont 

souvenir folder of gatlinburg, TN. featuring a lush illustrated green landscape and a pink and blue sunset.
Front cover of a souvenir folder filled with postcard size images that fold out in accordion style. From the Postcards from the Great Smoky Mountains Collection. 

In 1912, the Pi Beta Phi Fraternity for Women founded a settlement school in Gatlinburg, Tennessee as a service project for its 50th anniversary. Materials documenting the school’s history and its contemporary legacy, Arrowmont, are found within this collection. 

Postcards from the Great Smoky Mountains

Postcards from The Great Smoky Mountains documents well-known landmarks, geographic features, and man-made improvements such as roads complete with vintage automobiles. Included are works by several prominent photographers, including Jim Thompson, Walter Cline, and Jack Huff.

Tales from the Woods 

The personal journal of Albert G. "Dutch" Roth, documenting hikes in the Great Smoky Mountains area through stories and photographs spanning 1924-1959.  

Thompson Brothers Photograph Collection

Brothers James E. (Jim) and Robin Thompson were professional photographers based in Knoxville, Tennessee, in the early twentieth century. This collection includes approximately 400 photographs held by four institutions that capture the beauty of the Great Smoky Mountains.

William Cox Cochran Photograph Collection

William Cox Cochran captured these 89 images of East Tennessee between August 12th and 30th of 1886. The photographs are of East Tennessee people and landmarks, mostly located in what is now the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.