About Me
As a professor of history, I am interested in how subgroups in the United States have attempted to support, defeat, outmaneuver and influence each other over time. I am fascinated by the ways in which the powerful attempt to legitimize themselves to the less powerful. Finally, I pursue the meanings that people invest in middle-of-nowhere places.
At Susquehanna, I teach courses on the history of the United States since 1860, including The Civil War in the American Experience, Making a Multicultural America, Work and Play in the USA, African-American History, and Pennsylvania’s Pasts and Publics.
Education
PHD, Univ of North Carolina Chapel Hill
MA, Univ of North Carolina Chapel Hill
BS, Carnegie Mellon University
Professional Experience
Education
BA, Carnegie Mellon University, 1996.
Ph D, University of North Carolina, 2002.
Publications
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.
“Expert Vision: J. Horace McFarland in the Woods,” 139 (April 2015) PA Magazine of History and Biography.
“Three Miles, Two Creeks: Local Pennsylvania History in the Classroom,” 82 (Winter 2015) PA Magazine of History and Biography and Pennsylvania History (joint issue).
“The Logical Place to Take a Picture: William Gedney in Bethlehem,” 81 (Fall 2015) PA 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,” 127 PA Magazine of History and Biography.
“Artificial Limbs and Industrial Workers’ Bodies in Turn-of-the-century Pittsburgh,” 36 (Winter 2003) Journal of Social History.
Book reviews of Ian Hartman, In the Shadow of Boone and Crockett; Kelly Enright, The Maximum of Wilderness; Aaron Anderson, Builders of a New South; Brian C. Black and Michael J. Chiarappa, eds., Nature’s Entrepot; Matthew Wolf-Meyer, The Slumbering Masses; Barry Reay, New York Hustlers; James L. Flannery, The Glass House Boys of Pittsburgh; Amy L. Blair, Reading Up; Paul Lombardo, Three Generations, No Imbeciles; Karen Morin, Frontiers of Femininity; Kim Marra, Strange Duets; Rina C. Youngner, Industry in Art: Pittsburgh, 1812 to 1920; Gary S. Cross and John K. Walton, The Playful Crowd; Anne E. Mosher, Capital’s Utopia; and Sam Stephenson, Dream Street.
Review essay: “The Ten Millionth Person to Think It,” H-Net.
Film reviews of The Homestead Strike and Tupperware!.
Presentations
Slavishak, E. S. (Presenter & Author), Pennsylvania Historical Association, “Turned Turtle: Auto Accidents in the Central Susquehanna Valley, 1910-1930,” Scranton, PA. (October 13, 2017).
Slavishak, E. S. (Presenter & Author), Labor and Working-Class History Association, “The Labor of Unemployment: William Gedney’s Form and Content.”,” Seattle, WA. (June 25, 2017).
Slavishak, E. S. (Presenter & Author), Pennsylvania Historical Association, “Acting, Yet Acted Upon,” Shippensburg, PA. (October 7, 2016).
Slavishak, E. S. (Presenter & Author), Agricultural History Society, “Patterns Not at First Apparent: Outsiders in 1960s Kentucky,” Agricultural History Society, New York. (June 24, 2016).
Slavishak, E. S. (Presenter & Author), Southern Forum on Agricultural, Rural, and Environmental History, “”To Be Leaned Against, To Be Felt”: Moving Mountains,” Center for the History of Agriculture, Science, and the Environment of the South, Samford University, Birmingham, AL. (April 15, 2016).
Slavishak, E. S. (Presenter & Author), Bucknell Digital Scholarship Conference, “Small Places Contain Worlds of their Own,” Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA. (November 8, 2015).
Slavishak, E. S. (Presenter & Author), Pennsylvania Historical Association, “Pennsylvania History and Social Media,” Pennsylvania Historical Association, Harrisburg, PA. (October 15, 2015).
Slavishak, E. S. (Presenter & Author), Thinking Mountains 2015, “Blind Curves: Crashing Cars in 1950s Appalachia,” Canadian Mountain Studies Initiative, Jasper, Alberta. (May 7, 2015).
Slavishak, E. S. (Presenter & Author), Pennsylvania Historical Association, “The Walking Expert: Horace McFarland in the Woods,” Pennsylvania Historical Association, Gettysburg, PA. (October 20, 2013).
Slavishak, E. S. (Presenter & Author), Rust, Regeneration, and Romance, “The Logical Place to Take a Picture From: William Gedney and Bethlehem Steel,” Ironbridge International Institute for Cultural Heritage, University of Birmingham, Ironbridge, UK. (July 14, 2013).
Slavishak, E. S. (Presenter & Author), Society of Appalachian Historians, “Making it “Wild and Wonderful”: Picturing West Virginia in the 1970s,” Society of Appalachian Historians, UVA-Wise. (May 20, 2013).
Slavishak, E. S. (Presenter & Author), Affective Landscapes, “Embedded: William Gedney and the Feel of Big Rock,” Identity, Conflict and Representation Research Centre, University of Derby, Derby, UK. (May 25, 2012).
Slavishak, E. S. (Presenter & Author), American Society for Environmental History, “Largely Inaccessible: Belonging in West Virginia Whitewater, 1965-1975,” Madison, WI. (March 31, 2012).
Slavishak, E. S. (Presenter & Author), Appalachian Studies Association, “Control of the Approach: Hiking and Belonging,” Indiana, PA. (March 24, 2012).
Slavishak, E. S. (Presenter & Author), Pennsylvania Historical Association, “Nowhere: The Look of Landscapes after Coal,” Johnstown, PA. (October 14, 2011).
Slavishak, E. S. (Presenter & Author), Ohio Academy of History meeting, “Largely Inaccessible: (Not) Belonging in West Virginia Whitewater, 1965-197,” Granville, OH. (April 8, 2011).
Slavishak, E. S. (Presenter & Author), Gendered Bodies, “Brawn and Bruises: Imagining Pittsburgh’s Bodies of Work,” Departments of Anthropology and Women’s Studies, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA. (November 11, 2009).
Slavishak, E. S. (Presenter & Author), Pennsylvania Historical Association conference, “Photo Ops: Centralia and the Flattening of History,” Pennsylvania Historical Association, Bethlehem, PA. (October 18, 2008).
Slavishak, E. S. (Presenter & Author), Cheiron conference, “The Discouraging Uphill Struggle: Roswell Hill Johnson’s Career in Eugenics,” Cheiron, Ryerson University, Toronto. (June 28, 2008).
Research Activity
“Central Susquehanna Valley History Project website” (On-Going). https://omeka.susqu.edu/HIST324/csvhp
“Turned Turtle” (On-Going). A project on cars and car crashes in the rural United States between 1900 and 1940.