Using a feminist geography framework, this qualitative study explores the first-year postsecondary experiences of Appalachian women through an interrogation of the ways in which they construct place and gender through their transition between two distinct geographic places: the home community and the university. A diversity of gender and place…

An exploratory study examined the characteristics and attitudes of 78 West Virginia women, age 25 and older, who enrolled in a state college after an absence from schooling. The women were embedded in traditional Appalachian networks of family, church, and community but demonstrated quite liberal social attitudes toward women's roles, abortion,…