My name is Gwendolyn Gawarkiewicz-Franklin and I am a masters student at Temple in the history department. I am a Philadelphia native and an avid Phillies fan. I attended Ursinus College and graduated in 2018 with a degree in History and American Studies. At Ursinus, the most important project I conducted was titled “The Death Rattle of West Virginia: The Interlocking Relationships Between the Coal Industry, The Opioid Epidemic, and the Rise of Trump,” which was both my summer fellows project as well as my American Studies capstone paper. It was a content analysis based project that examined documents I collected from the West Virginia Regional History Center. I used these newspaper clippings from big coal sponsored papers (all from 1965 – 1980) to show a trend in symbolic language use during moments of utter distress in the towns they were printed in. I found that during years where coal mines were closing at unprecedented rates as the mechanization was rapidly increasing in the mines, a higher percentage of identity centered language was used. In 2016, Trump used the exact same language to speak to the exact same communities to elicit a very specific response. What was in the 1960s coal centered newspapers, has become massive “grassroots” organizations like Friends of Coal pumping out the same rhetoric 50 years later. This project still needs a lot of work. The connections between post-coal communities and opioid addition are immense. I think that researching how absentee capitalism, addiction, and blue to red political shifts in lower working class white communities is important to understanding how our political climate today functions under Trump.
While this project feels central to my identity as an academic in training, I am shifting my focus to work on a Philadelphia based urban history project. In 1998 the University of Pennsylvania began offering its faculty monetary incentives to move into West Philadelphia as an effort to help “foster the University’s commitment to neighborhood development” (1). With the construction of the Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander University of Pennsylvania Partnership School (PAS) in 2001 (their current building was built in 2003) in combination with their faculty subsidies, UPenn fundamentally changed West Philadelphia. My potential project will look at the change over time from 1998 to 2013 when the school changed from first come first serve to a lottery registration. The 2013 moment was extraordinary: wealthy neighborhood parents rented RV’s, porta-potties, and many amenities in order to endure waiting in line days before registration opened in the freezing January cold (2). Many working class native Philadelphian parents could not afford to this, leaving their kids to attend the neighborhood school instead. I want to study the impact of catchment areas as well as the role UPenn played in the trajectory towards the 2013 moment. All of this is subject to change.
The history I want to do ultimately has an impact. The most important part of history for me is the way it can inform the future. There is a lot of learn from our past. I look forward to engaging in more public facing historical endeavors through our class.
(1): “Increasing Opportunities for Homeownership and Housing.” Office for the Executive Vice President: Strategic Initiatives. http://www.evp.upenn.edu/strategic-initiatives/housing-and-homeownership.html.
(2): Kristen Graham. “Why Philly Parents Lined Up at 4am To Get Their Kids Into Kindergarten.” The Philadelphia Inquirer, January 31st, 2020. https://www.inquirer.com/education/kindergarten-philadelphia-schools-line-lottery-greenfield-20200131.html.
Gwen, Are you doing this research on Penn’s cultural expansion for a class, or as the optional thesis project? I’d love to hear more about this. Temple too has a faculty and staff real estate incentive (or at least it did in 2008!). I think many universities do, but I think these incentives mean different things in different places. I’m curious if Drexel also has one?
Dr Lowe,
I am doing this for my optional thesis so I am working (or thinking rather) on it 24/7. I hadn’t heard about Temple or Drexel! A podcast that Dr. Simon recommended I listen to, that I had mentioned in my other post, is making me rethink the scope of my project. I think it is pertinent that I outline public school segregation in a city like Philadelphia, much like Nice White Parents is doing for NYC. I would love love love to talk more about this!!!