Vitae
NAME: Jerry Bruce Thomas
CURRENT POSITION: Professor of History, Shepherd College
HOME ADDRESS:
OFFICE ADDRESS: P.O. Box 334, Department of History
Shepherd College
Shepherdstown, WV 25443
TELEPHONE: 304-876-2105 (home), 304-876-5309
(office and voice mail)
E-MAIL: jthomas@shepherd.edu
ACADEMIC DEGREES:
Ph.D. in American History (l971)
M.A. in American History (l967),
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
B.A. in Political Science (l963), West
Virginia University
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:
Shepherd College, l972-
Virginia Commonwealth University,
l970-l972
University of North Carolina (graduate
instructor), l966-l970
DISSERTATION:
"Coal Country: The Rise of the Southern Smokeless Coal
Industry and Its Effects on Area
Development, l872-l910"
(l971)
PUBLICATIONS:
-BOOK:
An Appalachian New Deal:West
Virginia in the Great Depression.
Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, l998.
-ENCYCLOPEDIA ARTICLES:
"Arthur
Ingram Boreman,"
"Johnson Newlon
Camden,"
"Henry Gassaway
Davis,"
"John Randolph Tucker," in American
National Biography. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
"Nathan Goff,
Jr." Encyclopedia of Southern History. Baton Rogue: L.S.U. Press,
l979, 545-546.
"Jedediah Hotchkiss,"
"Francis H. Peirpont,"
in Encyclopedia of the Confederacy. New
York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
"Back to the Land
Movement,"
"Bruce Crawford,"
"Camp Brock,"
"Camp Fairchance,"
"Civil Works
Administration,"
"Farm Security
Administration,"
"Heman Guy Kump,"
"Kamp Kump,"
"Izetta Jewel Brown
Miller,"
"New Deal,"
"Poor Farms,"
"The Great
Depression,"
"Shepherd College,"
"Walter R. Thurmond,"
"United Mine Workers,"
"The Writing of West
Virginia: A Guide to the Mountain State,"
"War on Poverty," in West
Virginia Encyclopedia, West Virginia Humanities Council, forthcoming in 2003.
"Appalachian Labor in the Great Depression,"
"Hitchman Coal and Coke vs John Mitchell, et al," in Encyclopedia
of Appalachia, forthcoming in 2002.
“The Impact of the Great Depression on Appalachia,”
in Encyclopedia of the Great
Depression, forthcoming in 2003
-JOURNAL ARTICLES:
"'Please Tell the
President...Only An Absolute Dictatorship Can Save Us': Lorena Hickok Reports
on the Great Depression in West Virginia, August 1933." West Virginia History, 57 (1998): 135-161.
"'The Nearly Perfect
State': Governor Homer Adams Holt, the WPA Writers' Project and the Making of West
Virginia: A Guide to the Mountain State." West Virginia History,
52 (1993): 91-109.
"Jedediah Hotchkiss, Gilded
Age Propagandist of Industrialism."
Virginia Biography, 74 (April, l976): l89-202.
-BOOK REVIEWS:
Reviews
forthcoming in Journal of Southern History and West Virginia History.
The History Teacher, l4, no. 2 (Feb. l981): 271-272; Journal of Southern History,
53, no. 2 (May,l977): 311-312; West Virginia History, 37 (Oct., l975):
66-67; West Virginia History, 36 (July, l975): 328-329; West Virginia
History, 53 (1994): 164-165; West Virginia History, 54, (1995)
West Virginia History 55( 1996); Business History Review, 46 (Winter, l982): 6l3-6l4; Journal
of Social History, (Winter, l986).
TEACHING MODULE: "The Heart of a Wolf: The Qin Revolution and the
Unification of China." Unpublished teaching module adopted in WV colleges and universities, l986.
RECENT PRESENTATIONS
Moderator,
Panel discussion on "Teaching Civil War History," Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, June, 2000
Commentator, “Jewish History and the Holocaust,” Phi
Alpha Theta Regional Conference, Western Maryland College, April 18, 1998.
Commentator, "West Virginia History." West
Virginia University History Conference, October, 1998
"Hard
Times: West Virginia in the Depths of the Great Depression." West Virginia Historical Association,
Marshall University, Huntington, West Virginia, March 30, 1996
Commentator, "World War II and the Cold War." Phi
Alpha Theta Regional Conference, Notre Dame College, Baltimore, MD, April 3, l996
GENERAL TEACHING AND RESEARCH FIELDS:
History of
Civilization; American social, economic, family, and labor history; the Gilded Age; twentieth century
America; West Virginia and Appalachia;
the coal industry; Latin America
PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS:
Organization of American Historians
Phi Alpha Theta (chapter advisor)
Southern Historical Association
Membership Committee, l995-1996
West Virginia Consortium for Faculty and
Course Development in International
Studies
West Virginia Historical Association
Secretary-Treasurer, l992-l993
President, l993-l995
RECENT TRAVEL AND RESEARCH AWARDS:
Shepherd College Faculty Development Grant for summer
writing, “West Virginia and the Perils of Modernization,” Summer, 2002.
Sabbatical, Fall, l999.
West Virginia Humanities Council grant for summer
research, "West Virginia and the Perils of Modernization, 1941-1972,"
1998
Shepherd College, Professional Development Committee,
grant for summer writing project, l995
West Virginia Humanities Council grant for summer
research, "The Great Depression in West Virginia," 1994
Shepherd
College, Faculty Development Research Minigrant, summer, l993
Sabbatical,
Fall, l989
Study trip to People's Republic of China, June, July,
l986 (U.S. Department of Education grant to the West Virginia Consortium for
Faculty and Course Development in International
Studies)
RELATED ACTIVITY
Board
of Editors, West Virginia History, 1996-
West
Virginia Archives and History Commission, l993-l995
Advisory Committee, West
Virginia History Database Project, 1992-
Commentator in West Virginia: A Film History,
sponsored by West Virginia Humanities Council, 1995, and widely telecast on public television
Moderator of panel discussion, "Coal: Black and
Gold," on the occasion of the world premier of Judith Shatin's
composition, "Coal," at Shepherd College, November 12, 1994
RECENT CAMPUS COMMITTEES
Appalachian
Heritage Writer-in-Residence Committee, 2001-
Admissions and Credits
Committee, 1998-2000
General Studies Assessment
Committee, 1998-
Historic Preservation Advisory
Committee, 1998-