David P. Demarest (November 9, 1931 – October 15, 2011) was an American academic and writer best known for his work on

organized labor The labour movement is the collective organisation of working people to further their shared political and economic interests. It consists of the trade union or labour union movement, as well as political parties of labour. It can be considere ...

social geography Social geography is the branch of human geography that is interested in the relationships between society and space, and is most closely related to social theory in general and sociology in particular, dealing with the relation of social phenome ...

, and US working-class literature.

Life and career

He was born in Englewood

New Jersey New Jersey is a U.S. state, state located in both the Mid-Atlantic States, Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States, Northeastern regions of the United States. Located at the geographic hub of the urban area, heavily urbanized Northeas ...

, grew up on 156 Jane Street, and graduated with a BA from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

, a MA from the

University of Connecticut The University of Connecticut (UConn) is a public land-grant research university system with its main campus in Storrs, Connecticut, United States. It was founded in 1881 as the Storrs Agricultural School, named after two benefactors. In 1893, ...

, and a PhD in English literature from the

University of Wisconsin, Madison A university () is an institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". Univ ...

. In 1964 he began a long and influential teaching career at

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The institution was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools. In 1912, it became the Carnegie Institu ...

. In the 1970s Demarest's research on the

social novel Social organisms, including human(s), live collectively in interacting populations. This interaction is considered social whether they are aware of it or not, and whether the exchange is voluntary or not. Etymology The word "social" derives fro ...

Western Pennsylvania Western Pennsylvania is a region in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the Unite ...

led to the publication of a pioneering anthology, ''From These Hills, From These Valleys'', and the re-publication in 1976 of ''

Out of This Furnace Out or OUT may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Films * ''Out'' (1957 film), a documentary short about the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 * ''Out'' (1982 film), an American film directed by Eli Hollander * ''Out'' (2002 film), a Japanese ...

'' by Thomas Bell, an overlooked 1941

proletarian novel Proletarian literature refers here to the literature created by left-wing writers mainly for the class-conscious proletariat. Though the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' states that because it "is essentially an intended device of revolution", it is t ...

of the American steel industry that became a bestseller for the

University of Pittsburgh Press The University of Pittsburgh Press is a scholarly publishing house and a major American university press, part of the University of Pittsburgh. The university and the press are located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the United States. The press ...

. Demarest's play "Gift To America" brought attention in the 1980s to the Croatian-American artist Maxo Vanka and his Millvale Murals at St. Nicholas Croatian Church. In the 1990s Demarest's work to document and preserve industrial landscapes resulted in a book and film commemorating the centennial of the Homestead Strike of 1892 and the historic restoration of the Pump House of the

Homestead Steel Works Homestead Steel Works was a large steel works located on the Monongahela River at Homestead, Pennsylvania in the United States. Originally built for the Pittsburgh Bessemer Steel Company, the plant began rapidly expanding following its purchase ...

, where agents of the

Pinkerton National Detective Agency Pinkerton is an American private investigation and security company established around 1850 in the United States by Scottish-born American cooper Allan Pinkerton and Chicago attorney Edward Rucker as the North-Western Police Agency, which l ...

attempted to land their barges and re-take control of the mill for

Andrew Carnegie Andrew Carnegie ( , ; November 25, 1835August 11, 1919) was a Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist. Carnegie led the expansion of the History of the iron and steel industry in the United States, American steel industry in the late ...

and

Henry Clay Frick Henry Clay Frick (December 19, 1849 – December 2, 1919) was an American industrialist, financier, and art patron. He founded the H. C. Frick & Company coke manufacturing company, was chairman of the Carnegie Steel Company and played a major ...

from the locked-out workers. Demarest was also a founder of the nonprofit Battle of Homestead Foundation that promotes awareness of labor history. For years, too, he championed the restoration and preservation of the Carnegie Free Library of Braddock, the first Carnegie library in the US built in

Braddock, Pennsylvania Braddock is a Borough (Pennsylvania), borough located in the eastern suburbs of Pittsburgh in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, upstream from the mouth of the Monongahela River. The population was 1,721 as of the 2020 United States ...

in 1888. His parents were David P. Demarest Sr., and Ruth Marsland Demarest.

Illness and death

Diagnosed with

Alzheimer's disease Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disease and the cause of 60–70% of cases of dementia. The most common early symptom is difficulty in remembering recent events. As the disease advances, symptoms can include problems wit ...

, Demarest died at the Forbes Hospice in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on October 15, 2011. Burial arrangements were private.Kalson, Sally.
Obituary: David P. Demarest Jr./Helped preserve region's immigrant culture
" Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: ''Pittsburgh Post-Gazette'', October 20, 2011.

Books

* ''Legal Language and Situation in the Eighteenth Century Novel: Readings in Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, and Austen'', dissertation (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1963). * ''The Ghetto Reader'', co-editor with Lois Lamdin (New York: Random House, 1970). * ''From These Hills, From These Valleys: Selected Fiction about Western Pennsylvania'', (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1976). * ''Out of This Furnace'', Thomas Bell, Afterword by David Demarest (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1976). * ''The Homestead Strike of 1892'', Arthur Burgoyne, Afterword by David Demarest (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1979). * ''The River Ran Red: Homestead, 1892'', co-editor with Fannia Weingartner (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992).

Film

* ''Out of This Furnace: A Walking Tour of Thomas Bell's Novel'', with Steffi Domike, video, 1990, distributed by the University of Pittsburgh Press.

References

Sources

''Contemporary Authors Online''. The Gale Group, 2008.

External links

Obituary, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Battle of Homestead Foundation
{{DEFAULTSORT:Demarest, David P. 1931 births 2011 deaths Princeton University alumni University of Connecticut alumni University of Wisconsin–Madison College of Letters and Science alumni Carnegie Mellon University faculty Writers from Pittsburgh Writers from New Jersey 20th-century American writers