Lou Martin, Ph.D.
Hometown: New Cumberland, WV
Joined Chatham: 2008
ACADEMIC AREAS OF INTEREST
U.S. history, labor and working-class history, and Latin American history.
BIOGRAPHY
Lou Martin, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of History at Chatham University. He offers courses in US and Latin American history, labor and working-class history, and environmental history. His research interests include labor, working-class politics, Appalachian history and culture, and twentieth-century political economy. He has researched workers in the steel and pottery industries in West Virginia and published multiple works on the steel industry of West Virginia. He has presented at the North American Labor History Conference, the Working-Class Studies Association Conference, and the Appalachian Studies Association Conference. Originally from West Virginia, he earned his B.A. from West Virginia University, his M.A. from Carnegie Mellon University, and his Ph.D. from West Virginia University.
EDUCATION
- Ph.D., West Virginia University (Morgantown, WV), 2008
- M.A., Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA), 2001
- B.A., West Virginia University (Morgantown, WV), 1994
AWARDS
- William D. Barnes Award, West Virginia University, 2008.
- Labor and Working Class History Association Travel Grant, October 2006.
- Henry and Rebecca Thornburg Award, West Virginia University, 2006.
- Wesley M. Bagby Award, West Virginia University, 2005.
- Robert and Winona Wilkins Award, West Virginia University, 1999.
- Buhl Professor, Chatham University, 2016
ORGANIZATIONS
- Appalachian Studies Association
- Labor and Working-Class History Association
ACHIEVEMENTS
- Dissertation Fellowship, Department of History, West Virginia University, Fall 2007.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
- Smokestacks in the Hills: Rural-Industrial Workers in West Virginia (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015).
- “Factory Workers in the Hills of West Virginia: The Values and Politics of Rural Industrial Workers in Hancock County, 1930-1965,” LABOR: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 7 (Fall 2010).
- (co-edited) Culture, Class, and Politics in Modern Appalachia, (forthcoming) West Virginia University Press.
- “Tin Plate Towns, 1890-1910: Local Labor Movements and Workers’ Responses to the Crisis in the Steelworkers’ Union,” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies 74 (2007).
- Hancock County: Images of America. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2006.
- “The 1936 Portsmouth Steel Strike: ‘As Portsmouth Goes So Goes the Steel Industry,’” Parts 1 and 2, Portsmouth Free Press, Vol. 2, No. 2 and No. 3.
- “The Pine Bank Bridge and Its Changing Meaning Through the Years,” Western Pennsylvania History. Vol. 89, No. 2 (Summer 2006), 26-33.
SELECTED PRESENTATIONS
- “Industrial Workers and the Shift to a Service Economy in West Virginia,” Working-Class Studies Conference, SUNY-Stony Brook, June 3-5, 2010.
- “Governor Marland, The Little Report, and Economic Diversification in West Virginia in the 1950s,” Appalachian Studies Association, North Georgia College and State University, Dahlonega, GA, March 19-21, 2010.
- “Beyond Gut Feelings: Oral History and the Politics of Steel and Pottery Workers in Northern West Virginia, 1945-1970,” Appalachian Studies Association, Marshall University, Huntington, West Virginia, March 28-30, 2008.
- “Negotiated Paternalism Among Steel and Pottery Workers in Northern West Virginia, 1945-1965,” Working-Class Studies Conference, Macalester College, St. Paul, Minnesota, June 15-17.