Edward Slavishak
Professor of History
Program Director of GO Czech Republic
Department Head of History
Education
PHD, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
MA, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
BS, Carnegie Mellon University
About Me
I love studying systems—the complex worlds that people build for themselves and others. These systems trap some people, they reward some people, and they teach others how to be creative, how to escape. I’ve written books on industrial work in Pittsburgh at the turn of the twentieth century and the work of “experts” in the Appalachian Mountains. I’m currently writing about rural Virginia in the 1920s, a time when cars, booze, cops, roads, and chain gangs formed a world removed from the mainstream life “respectable” Virginians. I’m always looking for history majors to participate in my ongoing research projects.
I love teaching at SU. I’ve been here since 2003, teaching about the United States, the American Civil War, work, play, African-American stories, Pennsylvania, polar exploration, crime, and consumerism. I love taking students beyond the classroom and getting them into the community. My public history courses do just that—students interview local residents, give walking tours around Selinsgrove, and generally take history to the masses!
Professional Experience
PUBLICATIONS: Books
▶ Proving Ground: Expertise and Appalachian Landscapes. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018.
▶ Bodies of Work: Civic Display and Labor in Industrial Pittsburgh. Duke University Press, 2008.
PUBLICATIONS: Articles/Chapters
▶ “Bleak Reclamation: Anthracite Mining Moods,” Pennsylvania History 90 (2023).
▶ “Collision Course: Rural Track Crossing Habits and the Railroad in the United States, 1915–32,” Technology and Culture 63 (2022).
▶ “Expert Vision: J. Horace McFarland in the Woods,”139(April 2015)Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography.
▶ “Three Miles, Two Creeks: Local Pennsylvania History in the Classroom,”82(Winter 2015)Pennsylvania Magazine of History and BiographyandPennsylvania History(joint issue).
▶ “The Logical Place to Take a Picture: William Gedney in Bethlehem,”81(Fall 2015)Pennsylvania History.
▶ “Loveliness, but with an Edge: Looking at the Smokies, 1915-1945,”45(Summer 2012)Journal of Social History.
▶ “Made by the Work: A Century of Laboring Bodies in the United State,” in Kosut and Moore, eds.,The Body Reader: Essential Social and Cultural Readings. New York University Press. 2010.
▶ “The Ten Year Club: Artificial Limbs and Testimonials in the Early Twentieth Century,” in Schweitzer and Moskowitz, eds.,Testimonials in the American Marketplace: Emulation, Identity, Community. Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
▶ “From Nation to Family: Two Careers in the Recasting of Eugenics,”34(January 2009)Journal of Family History.
▶ “Working-Class Muscle: Homestead and Bodily Disorder in the Gilded Age,”3(October 2004)Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.
▶ “Civic Physiques: Public Images of Workers in Pittsburgh, 1880-1910,”127Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography.
▶ “Artificial Limbs and Industrial Workers’ Bodies in Turn-of-the-century Pittsburgh,”36(Winter 2003)Journal of Social History.