Join our good friend Dr. Hal Gorby LIVE from the safety of your own home computer or phone for another fascinating Facebook LIVESTREAM presentation.
Dr. Gorby will discuss his NEW book from WVU Press, "Wheeling’s Polonia: Reconstructing Polish Community in a West Virginia Steel Town."
ORDER YOUR COPY ON WVU PRESS WEBSITE and get a 30% DISCOUNT!
Use the following code: POLONIA30
William Hal Gorby’s study of Wheeling’s Polish community weaves together stories of immigrating, working, and creating a distinctly Polish American community, or Polonia, in the heart of the upper Ohio Valley steel industry. It addresses major topics in the history of the United States in the first half of the twentieth century, while shifting from urban historians’ traditional focus on large cities to a case study in a smaller Appalachian setting. Wheeling was a center of West Virginia’s labor movement, and Polish immigrants became a crucial element within the city’s active working-class culture. Arriving at what was also the center of the state’s Roman Catholic Diocese, Poles built religious and fraternal institutions to support new arrivals and to seek solace in times of economic strain and family hardship. The city’s history of crime and organized vice also affected new immigrants, who often lived in neighborhoods targeted for selective enforcement of Prohibition. At once a deeply textured evocation of the city’s ethnic institutions and an engagement with larger questions about belonging, change, and justice, Wheeling’s Polonia is an inspiring account of a diverse working-class culture and the immigrants who built it.
SPEAKER BIO: Dr. Gorby is a teaching assistant professor of history and director of undergraduate advising at West Virginia University. He teaches courses on West Virginian, Appalachian, and American immigration history. He also consulted on the research and script editing for the Emmy-nominated PBS American Experience documentary The Mine Wars. Dr. Gorby is a 2019 West Virginia History Hero recipient.
ORDER YOUR COPY ON WVU PRESS WEBSITE and get a 30% DISCOUNT!
Use the following code: POLONIA30
How do you watch this virtual Lunch With Books LIVE?
Make sure to like and follow us on Facebook. Then log into your Facebook account at noon on Tuesday and click on over to facebook.com/lunchwithbooks/. You can tune in and watch Travis on April 14 through your Facebook account.
No worries. Video playback of the lecture will be available on Facebook page shortly after the lecture ends. We will add the video to our website where it will be available to view without a Facebook account.
"Lunch With Books" is the library’s flagship program for adult patrons. These lunchtime programs feature authors, poets, musicians, historians, and more every Tuesday at noon. Bring your lunch to your laptop (or smartphone, or tablet, or desktop computer), feed your brain!
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