WVU history professor interviewed on West Virginia public television

Morgantown, W.Va., September 25, 2007:WVU history professor Ken Fones-Wolf was recently interviewed for the West Virginia Public Broadcasting show “Outlook.”

Dr. Fones-Wolf is the author of “Glass Towns: Industry, Labor and Political Economy in Central Appalachia, 1890-1930s” (University of Illinois Press, 2007). He was interviewed about the closing of Fenton Art Glass, the largest manufacturer of handmade colored glass in the United States. The company, located in Williamstown, W.Va., is closing after 102 years of business.

“The closing of Fenton, which is perhaps best known in the country for making ‘carnival glass,’ reflects the convergence of a number of factors--declining specialty markets, product substitutes, foreign competition, and skyrocketing health care costs--that have destroyed the state's proud heritage of producing quality glass tableware,” Fones-Wolf said. “West Virginia is losing an industry and its craftsmen who were once the envy of industrial workers in the nation and the world.”

“Outlook,” a weekly news magazine show, will air at 9 p.m. on Thursday, October 4 on PBS, local channel 8. It will be rebroadcast on Sunday, October 7 at 6 p.m.

In his book “Glass Towns,” Fones-Wolf examines the political and economic climate of the early 20th century and explores how the glass industry had the potential to improve West Virginia’s political economy by establishing a base of value-added manufacturing to complement the state’s abundance of coal, oil, timber, and natural gas.

The Department of History is housed in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences at West Virginia University.

For more information, contact Fones-Wolf at 304-293-2421, ext. 5240, or at Kenneth.Fones-Wolf@mail.wvu.edu.

W-V-U