 |
|
 |
 |
|
|
|
Who We Are
Co-Directors
Sherry Linkon is a professor of English and American Studies at Youngstown State University (YSU). She is the co-author with John Russo of Steeltown USA: Work and Memory in Youngstown (
John Russo is the coordinator of the Labor Studies Program in the Williamson College of Business Administration at YSU. He received his doctorate from University of Massachusetts/Amherst, where he also served as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Labor Relations and Research Center. John has written widely of labor and social issues and is recognized as a national expert on labor unions and working-class issues. His current research interests involve a comparative study of global strategic campaigns by unions and a book length project on the history of GM (Lordstown). John co-authored with Sherry Linkon, Steeltown, USA: Work and Memory in Youngstown (2002), and together they co-edited New Working-Class Studies (Cornell, 2005). For his many activities, John is one of the few professors at YSU to have ever received Distinguished Professorship Awards in each of three areas: research and scholarship, teaching, and public service.
Administrative Assistant
Patty LaPresta has served as the Center's administrative assistant since January 2001. Prior to that time, she worked with the Central Intelligence Agency in Washington, DC, and The Ohio State University's Young Scholars Program. Patty graduated from YSU with an Associate degree in Applied Business and a Bachelors in General Studies with an emphasis in psychology and criminal justice.
Faculty Affiliates
Corey Andrews is an assistant professor of English at YSU. He specializes in 18th-century British literature, particularly the writing of Scottish working-class poets. He has written and presented on such working-class figures as Robert Burns, Stephen Duck, Mary Collier, and Robert Dodsley. His book Literary Nationalism in 18th-Century Scottish Club Poetry was published in 2004.
Kevin Ball is an associate professor of English at YSU. He received his PhD from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and his MA and BA from Truman State University in northeast Missouri. He is a composition and rhetoric specialist. His teaching and research interests include service learning, critical pedagogy, and community inquiry within the composition classroom. Kevin integrates readings, discussions, and writing projects investigating working-class issues in his freshman composition courses.
L. Diane Barnes is an associate professor of history at YSUniversity and an associate editor of the Frederick Douglass Papers. She is author of Artisan Workers in the Upper South: Petersburg, Virginia, 1820-1865 (2008) and is editor-in-chief of Ohio History. Along with Paul Finkelman, Barnes co-edits a series on Law, Politics and Society in the Midwest for Ohio University Press. A first generation college student, and the daughter and granddaughter of West Virginia glassworkers and coal miners, Barnes earned her Ph.D. from West Virginia University.
Leslie A. Brothers received her Masters in Art History and Contemporary Criticism from Virginia Commonwealth University. She has a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. In addition she received an honors degree in Women's Studies. Leslie is a museum professional who has worked in a number of large municipal museums. Her area of expertise is Contemporary Art and Culture and her research is based in rethinking the University Art Museum as a kind of research center for understanding consciousness and human experience through the arts. Leslie is the Director of the McDonough Museum of Art at YSU. She is also an adjunct professor in YSU's Department of Art and teaches courses in Contemporary Art and Theory.
Phil Chan was born in Canton, China, then immigrated with his family to Cleveland, Ohio, in 1956. He lived there for two years before moving to California, where he spend his formative years. He studied at San Jose State, and the University of California, receiving his BA in 1971 and MFA in Drawing/Painting in 1976. From 1975 to 1991 Phil taught in 18 colleges and universities throughout the country, from California to New York, Vermont to Texas, Wisconsin to North Carolina before settling down at YSU in 1992. His artwork has been been widely distributed and shown in 45 of the 50 states as well as China, Hungary, and Mexico. He has also received a National Endowment for the Arts grants for his artistic work as well as three National Endowment for the Humanities grants for college teachers. Since coming to YSU Phil has been teaching in the graphic design program specializing in typography.
Rosemary D'Apolito is a professor of sociology at YSU and has played a central role in our diversity course development project at the university. She has given presentations on diversity and racism in the classroom.
Donna DeBlasio is an associate professor of history and director of the Center for Historic Preservation at YSU. She was one of the developers and, later, manager of the Ohio Historical Society's Youngstown Historical Center of Industry and Labor. She has a BA and MA in History from YSU and a PhD from Kent State University. At the 1997 Working-Class Studies Conference she presented an article on company housing built by the Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company. She is currently researching the role of leisure in Youngstown’s immigrant communities in the early 20th century.
Timothy Francisco is an assistant professor of English at YSU.
Paul Gordiejew is an associate professor of anthropology at YSU. His current ethnographic project, “Crossing Midlothian,” examines how and why intersections of race, class, and religion around and across the physical and symbolic boundary of
Patricia Hauschildt is an associate professor of English Education. She teaches freshman composition and literature courses in the English Department as well as courses specifically for English education majors. Every course involves discussions about social class whenever it relates to one's writing audience, one's self as a writer, one's perspective on reading of literature, one's view of life and/or one's intersection with teaching. In one reading/writing course, she uses Patrick Finn's Literacy with an Attitude as a text to explore working-class issues more in depth with prospective teachers. Recent research data (that awaits writing) investigates the struggle of one white, working-class teacher to effectively teach both white and African American eighth grade students in a low-income, city middle school. Patricia is currently planning a research project for Fall 2008 with several working-class teachers in a low-income city middle school in another city.
Alyssa Lenhoff is the director of the Journalism Program at YSU. She is a former investigative reporter and has won some of the top prizes in journalism, including two Scripps Howard national reporting awards. Alyssa earned her undergraduate degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She also holds a Master's degree in English from YSU and is pursuing a doctorate degree from Union Institute and University.
Hunter Morrison is the Director of YSU’s Office of Campus Planning and Community Partnerships. After working for more than 20 years as Director of the Cleveland City Planning Department, he came to Youngstown to manage YSU’s participation in the development and implementation of a new city plan for the city, Youngstown 2010. He has a special interest in how industrial heritage communities like Youngstown develop economically, geographically, and socially.
Denise Narcisse is an assistant professor of sociology at YSU. She holds a Masters degree in Public Administration (MPA) from
Community Affiliates
Jeanne Bryner is a registered nurse at Trumbull Memorial Hospital in Warren, Ohio. Her poems have appeared in several literary magazines, including the Hiram Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, and The Sun, and she has published several volumes of poems, including Breathless (Wick Poetry Chapbook Series, 1995) and Blind Horse (Bottom Dog Press, 1999). She has recently published Tenderly Lift Me, a compilation of oral histories she collected on the nursing profession.
Brian Corbin is the executive director of Catholic Charities Services and Catholic Health Affairs of the Diocese of Youngstown, and is a member of numerous local nonprofit housing corporations working in low income neighborhoods. He is completing his PhD in political economy at MIT. His areas of research includes labor studies and religion and contemporary issues regarding working-class housing.
Jim Courim is a steelworker at WCI Steel in Warren, Ohio. He has been active in the development of the Institute of Career Development Program for Local 1375, and he helped establish the partnership between CWCS and the Local. He has held several leadership positions within the local including Grievance Chair, Insurance and Benefits Representative, and Pension Representative. Jim has an Associate in Labor Studies from YSU and is currently working towards a baccalaureate degree in Education also from YSU. As well as working in the steel mill, he travels around the state of Ohio training other steelworkers in union activities.
Marc Dann is a lawyer and former Ohio Attorney General. Marc is a graduate of the University of Michigan and the Case Western Reserve University School of Law. He practices law representing working- and middle-class consumers and trade unionist.
Diane Gilliam Fisher is the author of three collections of poetry: Kettle Bottom, One of Everything, and A Recipe for Blackberry Cake. Kettle Bottom won the Ohioana Library Association Book of the Year Award in poetry (2005), a Pushcart Prize, and was used as a Freshmen Reader at Smith College (2005). She lives and works in Northeast Ohio and specializes in Appalachian poetry, life, and culture.
Beth (Mann) Hepfner is the director of finance for Homes for Kids of Ohio, Inc., a non-profit agency that places foster children and provides mental health services to children in the community. She graduated from YSU in 1991 with a BS in Business Administration with a major in accounting and in 1998 with an Associate in Labor Studies. She is active with the Boy Scouts of America.
Carmen John Leone, taught English at Cardinal Mooney High School, Struthers High School, Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, and Youngstown State University before retiring in 2008. Deeply interested in his Italian heritage, Dr. Leone wrote Rose Street: A Family Story, which was presented by him and his cousin Robert Calcagni (the writer of the epilogue), as a gift to their family at Christmas in 1996, then published in the spring of 1997. The book is now in its second edition. Two other books, Rose Street Revisited and Remembering Our Rose Streets (the latter co-authored with Calcagni) have also been published, and Leone is now working on a continuation of the family story, to be called Garland Days. He has also authored numerous poems, short stories, and articles.
Bill Mullane has been an educator and arts administrator for 25 years and currently serves as supervisor of School Improvement and Community Relations for the Ashtabula County Educational Service Center in Ohio. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Kent State University and Masters in Educational Administration from YSU. Bill has a long history of involvement in the region's arts community. His curatorial efforts include numerous exhibitions at a local art gallery. Bill has served as writing team lead on educational grants totaling over $600,000. As an educator, Bill is particularly focused on high school transformation, believing that in order for secondary education to be relevant in the 21st century the structure of the American high school needs to change.
Bryn Zellers is a local artist, whose work incorporates images and materials from the steel mills and local history. He has exhibited in Youngstown, Cleveland, and New York, and has designed many of the CWCS conference posters. Bryn currently runs Slaghammer Productions, a graphics and video production studio.
318 Fifth Ave :: Youngstown, Ohio 44555
PH: 330.941.2978
