David P. Demarest Papers

David Porter Demarest Jr. was born on November 9th, 1931 in Englewood, New Jersey. The son of a commercial photographer and a high school history teacher, Demarest earned his bachelor’s degree in English from Princeton University in 1953. He went on to attend the Universities of Connecticut and Wisconsin, where he earned his master’s and doctorate degrees, respectively. Upon graduating from UW, Demarest began teaching at the university’s Madison and Manitowoc campuses. He also taught at Washington University in St. Louis before joining the faculty at what was then Carnegie Tech in 1964.

Hired to teach composition and British literature, Demarest’s interests in working-class history and culture shaped much of his career. His classes were often interdisciplinary and frequently co-taught by professors outside the English department. One frequent collaborator was his close friend and colleague Eugene Levy, with whom he co-taught several classes and worked closely on several projects over the years. Some of the highlights of Demarest’s academic career included the publishing of an anthology of Western Pennylvania-focused fiction, From These Hills, From These Valleys, the revival and eventual republishing of Thomas Bell’s now-classic novel Out of This Furnace, and the writing of “Gift to America,” a play based on Maxo Vanka’s murals in St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church in Millvale. The play was performed across the Pittsburgh region by the Iron Clad Agreement.

Widely regarded for his unique teaching style, Demarest was also well known across campus thanks to his longtime editorship of the staff and faculty newspaper, the FOCUS. For over twenty years, Demarest made the paper uniquely his own by combining his expertise in the English language with his concern for left-wing political and social issues. The paper was unique among other similar publications in that it was frequently critical of the university and its administration.

Demarest also championed several notable projects in the Pittsburgh community. A founding member of the Battle of Homestead Foundation, Demarest helped preserve the Pump House, which is one of the few remaining structures dating to the 1892 Battle of Homestead. Demarest was also instrumental in the preservation of the Braddock Carnegie Library and the Maxo Vanka murals in St. Nicholas Croatian Chruch in Millvale.

He passed away on October 15th, 2011 due to complications of Alzheimer’s disease.



References:

Kalson, Sally. “David P. Demarest Jr Nov. 9, 1931 - Oct. 15, 2011 Helped Preserve Region’s Immigrant Culture.” Pittsburgh Post - Gazette, October 20, 2011, sec. OBITUARY.

Woller, Joel, Maloney, and Charles Cunningham. “On the Ground with David Demarest: Toward a Methodology of Scholar Activism.” Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor 30 (2018): 379–93.