ECU writers contribute to Encyclopedia of NC

GREENVILLE, NC  —   East Carolina University professors and alumni are among the hundreds of contributors to the first edition of the Encyclopedia of North Carolina (University of North Carolina Press, 2006).

The book, edited by historian William S. Powell, is the first single-volume reference to the events, institutions and cultural forces that have defined the North Carolina. Ranging from tobacco to race relations, the volume includes more than 2,000 entries and more than 1,200 pages.

Among those from ECU who offered entries to the first edition reference book are Maury York, N.C. Collection librarian of the J.Y. Joyner Library; W. Keats Sparrow, dean emeritus of the Harriot College of Arts and Sciences; English faculty members Alex Albright and Jerry Leath Mills; and history faculty members Lawrence A. Babits and Karin Zipf.

York’s entries include essays on clocks, the Harriot-Henderson Cotton Mills Strike, the Parent-Teacher Association and the state library. Albright’s entries include essays about collards, filmmaking, the “Literary Lantern.”

Babits wrote about the boats of North Carolina; Zipf wrote about granges and sharecropping; Mills’ entries included short essays about Ginghoul Castle, mules, the plott hound (the state dog); snipe hunting; and the “Southern Part of Heaven.”

Former ECU history professor Luann Jones wrote about poultry and peddlers; Sparrow wrote an entry about fish stew; Patricia Pertalion, professor emeritus of theater and dance, wrote an essay about dance; ECU alumnus Michael “Lightnin’” Wells wrote an entry about record production in North Carolina. ECU alumni David Norris and Joan Boudreaux also offered entries.