Eliot Wigginton

Eliot Wigginton (born Brooks Eliot Wigginton on November 9, 1942) is an American oral historian, folklorist, writer and former educator. He is most widely known for developing with his high school students the Foxfire Project, a writing project consisting of interviews and stories about Appalachia. The project was developed into a magazine and series of best-selling Foxfire books. The series comprised essays and articles by high school students from Rabun County, Georgia focusing on Appalachian culture. In 1987, Wigginton was named "Georgia Teacher of the Year," and in 1989, he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.

In 1992, Wigginton confessed to and was convicted of child molestation.

In 1964, Wigginton earned a bachelor's degree in English from Cornell University, and then earned a Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) degree in English from Cornell. In 1966, he began teaching English in the Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School, located in the Appalachian Mountains of northeastern Georgia. named after local phosphorescent lichen.

In 1972, an anthology of collected Foxfire articles was published as The Foxfire Book (Anchor Press, 1972). The Foxfire Book achieved New York Times best-seller status, selling 298,756 copies by February 1973. By 1975, Foxfire magazine had about 10,000 subscribers, and had earned $250,000 in royalties from sales of Foxfire and Foxfire 2. It was staged at the Ethel Barrymore Theater on Broadway in New York City. In 1983, Jessica Tandy won a Tony Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play for her performance as Annie Nations, a Southern Appalachian widow based on the popular Aunt Arie, who appeared in several Foxfire books, including Aunt Arie: A Foxfire Portrait. In 1987, the play was adapted into a TV movie by the same name, which received one Golden Globe nomination, and seven nominations for the 1988 Primetime Emmy awards. Jessica Tandy reprised her role as Annie Nations, winning the Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Special. Jan Scott and Eric Rogalla also won Emmy Awards for Outstanding Art Direction.

In 2014, Wigginton contributed an oral history interview for a documentary on Mary Crovatt Hambidge, founder of the Hambidge Center for the Arts & Sciences, describing his childhood memories of Hambidge and her weaving operations at the Rabun County property where he also briefly lived in the late 1960s.

Child molestation On September 15, 1992, Wigginton was indicted for child molestation. Bill Parrish, then-executive director of Foxfire Fund, announced that the guilty plea would require Wigginton's "total separation" from the organization.

Foxfire after Wigginton After Wigginton's departure, the Foxfire project continued under the auspices of the Foxfire Fund and its educational model of the "Foxfire approach" to experiential education. The students and Fund developed a museum in Mountain City, Georgia, consisting of several cabins. In 1998, the University of Georgia anthropology department started to work with the Foxfire project to archive 30 years worth of materials. The collection is held at the museum and includes "2,000 hours of interviews on audio tape, 30,000 black and white pictures and hundreds of hours of videotape." By improving how the material is archived and establishing a database, the university believes the materials can be made more easily available for scholars. The Foxfire educational philosophy is based on the values of "a learner-centered, community-based expression." By 1998, educational theories from Foxfire were being used by teachers in 37 school systems in the US.