West Virginia University

Ken Fones-Wolf

Professor of History and Stuart and Joyce Robbins Chair

Ken at Moher

Teaching Fields:

Appalachia, US working class, Gilded Age and Progressive Era

Contact:

Kenneth Fones-Wolf
202C Woodburn Hall
P.O. Box 6303
Morgantown, WV 26506-6303
Phone: (304) 293-2421 ext. 5240
Fax: (304) 293-3616
Kenneth.Fones-Wolf@mail.wvu.edu

  • Degrees

      BA, University of Maryland, 1973
      MA, University of Wisconsin, 1975
      MA, University of Maryland, 1979
      PhD, Temple University, 1986

  • Research Interests

      My most recent book, Glass Towns, tried to advance two questions: how did the Appalachian region, so rich in natural resources, become so underdeveloped; and how did the global restructuring of an industry in the 19th century reshape social relations in emerging small manufacturing towns in West Virginia. This work built on long-term interests in political economy, working-class studies, and social and immigration history. These concerns also influenced a book I coedited by my colleague, Ron Lewis, Transnational West Virginia: Ethnic Communities and Economic Change, 1840-1940 (West Virginia University Press, 2002).

      Currently, I am returning to a much older concern of mine, the intersection of religious and working-class history. With my wife, Elizabeth Fones-Wolf, we are deeply in the middle of a book project tentatively titled, “The Struggle for the Soul of the Postwar South: The Sacred and the CIO’s Southern Organizing Drive.” This book will blend religious and labor history to examine the cultural barriers to social and political change in the South and their implications for contemporary America. We hope to follow that monograph with a survey of the impact of Protestantism on class relations in the 20th century U.S.

  • Grad Students Advised

  • Courses Offered

  • Publications

      Culture, Class and Politics in Modern Appalachia: Essays in Honor of Ronald L. Lewis (West Virginia University Press, forthcoming 2009)

      Glass Towns: Industry, Labor and Political Economy in Appalachia, 1890-1930s (University of Illinois Pr., 2007)

      “The Sacred in the Southern Organizing Drive: Protestant Activists in Operation Dixie,” Labor: Studies in Working Class History of the Americas (forthcoming, 2009)

      “Transatlantic Craft Migrations and Transnational Spaces: Belgian Window Glass Workers in America, 1880-1920,” Labor History (Aug. 2004), 299-321.

      “Immigrants, Labor and Capital in a Transnational Context: Belgian Glassworkers in America, 1880-1925,” Journal of American Ethnic History (winter 2002), 59-80.