Rate My Professor Ed Slavishak

Edward Slavishak is Professor of History and Department Head of the History Department at Susquehanna University, where he has been teaching since 2003. He holds a PhD and MA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a BS from Carnegie Mellon University. Slavishak's research focuses on complex social systems in American history, including industrial work and civic display in Pittsburgh at the turn of the twentieth century, expertise and landscapes in the Appalachian Mountains, and rural Virginia in the 1920s, encompassing automobiles, prohibition-era booze, policing, roads, and chain gangs. He is the author of two scholarly monographs: Bodies of Work: Civic Display and Labor in Industrial Pittsburgh, published by Duke University Press in 2008, and Proving Ground: Expertise and Appalachian Landscapes, published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2018. His peer-reviewed articles have appeared in leading journals such as Pennsylvania History, Technology and Culture, Journal of Social History, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, and Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Notable publications include “Bleak Reclamation: Anthracite Mining Moods” in Pennsylvania History (2023), “Collision Course: Rural Track Crossing Habits and the Railroad in the United States, 1915–32” in Technology and Culture (2022), “Loveliness, but with an Edge: Looking at the Smokies, 1915-1945” in Journal of Social History (2012), “Artificial Limbs and Industrial Workers’ Bodies in Turn-of-the-Century Pittsburgh” in Journal of Social History (2003), and “Working-Class Muscle: Homestead and Bodily Disorder in the Gilded Age” in Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (2004).

Slavishak teaches courses on United States history, the American Civil War, work, play, African-American stories, Pennsylvania history, polar exploration, crime, and consumerism. His public history courses engage students in community-based learning, such as interviewing local residents, conducting walking tours in Selinsgrove, and contributing to projects like the Central Susquehanna Valley History Project. He also serves as Program Director of GO Czech Republic. Slavishak has extended his scholarship beyond academia through public engagements, including providing historical insights for actor Zachary Quinto on NBC’s Who Do You Think You Are?, leading an archiving workshop in Sierra Leone influenced by his teaching methods, and presenting on topics like the history of eel fishing in the Susquehanna River. In 2020, he received university recognition for his exceptional record of scholarship, highlighted by his two books.