Faculty & Staff

History and Political Science

Blake Slonecker, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of History and Political Science
Phone: 641-585-8321
Fax: 641-585-8194
Email: blake.slonecker@waldorf.edu

Education:

BA Honors History, Gonzaga University, 2004

MA History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2006

PhD History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2009

Biography:

Blake Slonecker came to Waldorf College from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he earned his PhD in History in 2009. His dissertation, “Living the Movement: Liberation News Service, Montague Farm, and the New Left, 1967-1981,” examines the collective impulse of the late New Left. His research fuses social and cultural history to explore the interstices between social movements of the 1960s and 1970s. He argues that an amalgam of sexual liberation, antinuclear activism, counterculture, and alternative media provided a compelling counterpoint to the conservative ascendancy in American political culture.

His dissertation took root in earlier research on the civil rights and student movements. His article on Catholic desegregation traces the theological origins of integration in a rural North Carolina town (North Carolina Historical Review 83, no. 3). Meanwhile, his later article on the Columbia University protest of 1968 argues that the milieu students created in occupied campus buildings facilitated the reconciliation of racial, political, and sexual difference (Journal of Social History 41, no. 4). These projects led him to explore the creation of a New Left counterculture that entwined political and cultural radicalism to create alternatives to the dominant political and culture mores of the time in his dissertation. His most recent article, “We Are Marshall Bloom: Suicide and the Collective Memory of the Sixties,” explores how various political activists and social thinkers have utilized the memory of Sixties activist Marshall Bloom to uphold their particular narratives of Sixties activism. His reviews have appeared in the Journal of American History, Columbia, and The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics, and Culture.

Dr. Slonecker teaches both halves of the United States history survey at Waldorf College, in addition to upper division courses on a host of social history topics. These classes include American environmental and women’s history and African-American history. He also teaches courses on history methods, the United States since 1945, the Vietnam War, South Africa, Henry David Thoreau, and modern Latin America. Dr. Slonecker serves as the faculty advisor to Waldorf’s active History Club and is a member of the College’s Committee on Vocation and Service.

When not writing or teaching, he pursues such wild endeavors as reading novels, having tea parties with one daughter, and changing the diapers of another. His favorite cook is Mollie Katzen, belying his general aversion to meat consumption.

Teaching Philosophy:
My major goal as an instructor is to teach students how to understand their nation and culture in historical perspective. That begins by teaching them the basic skills of historical analysis. I model how to think historically by developing lectures that employ the skills I expect students to perform in written work. My lectures emphasize student interaction—through pair-and-shares, youth polls, role-playing, or silent conversation—to spur active learning and to practice analytical skills in class. But all my courses balance lectures with seminars that are more focused on crafting specific skills, especially the critical use of primary sources.

Additional Information: