All photography provided by Luke Manget and Daniel Manget

This website—very much a work in progress—is dedicated to teaching and learning the nature, history, and culture of the southern mountain region that encompasses parts of West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, South Carolina, and Alabama.  It contains no advertisements and generates no revenue. It showcases the work of my students, as well as my own and hopefully many others one day. If you are an educator and you think your students' work would fit in well on this site, or if you are interested in creating content, please contact me.

This website is a consolidation of a few different initiatives started by me and my brother, Daniel Manget. In 2014, we started a blog (the original thesouthernhighlander.org) to share our thoughts, knowledge, and expertise on the region that we called home. Daniel, an environmental educator who works for the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, wrote articles on the nature and ecology of the region, and I, an historian specializing in environmental history, southern history, and Appalachian history, contributed articles featuring my research into the region's history.  After teaching Appalachian History classes at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga and Dalton State College, I wanted way to showcase my students' work on the region, so I created the current website you are now looking at.

About me