Ph.D., Drew University
Geoffrey Pollick studies the history and culture of religion in the United States and North America. He teaches courses that explore broad questions of religion’s meanings and uses, including comparative studies of religious difference; surveys of global Christianity and Islam; the relationship between religious identity and healthcare; and advanced courses that consider American religious history and the relationship between religion and culture.
Dr. Pollick also works closely with students completing the Religious-Cultural Literacy for Healthcare Professions Minor, and with with students in the Philosophy and Religious Studies Major as they pursue internship opportunities with employers and community agencies, and as students seek to conduct research on topics relating to religion, culture, and society through their major capstone experience. Some examples of this work include mentoring a student through an internship at a regional social services agency that resulted in an offer of employment upon graduation; and he is currently working with an undergraduate research assistant, who will co-present with Dr. Pollick this spring, beginning to document linkages between race and religion in the early nineteenth-century New River Valley.
Dr. Pollick's scholarship emphasizes religion’s entanglements with political radicalism in the United States; the role and dimensions of religious liberalism; women’s religious leadership; critical theory and cultural history of religion; religion in popular culture; and religion and healthcare. His current research projects explore the political and social dimensions of women’s ordination during the late nineteenth century; religion and race as intertwined factors in developing the nineteenth-century settlements of Virginia's New River Valley; aesthetic impacts of influences shared between liberal Protestants and secular radicals in the prewar New York Left; and understandings of masculinity and illness among Virginia coal miners who experience Black Lung Disease.
Before coming to Radford University, Dr. Pollick held positions at Sweet Briar College, New York University, Kean University, and Drew University. He holds a Ph.D. and M.Phil. from Drew University, an M.A. from Claremont School of Theology, and a B.A. from the University of Puget Sound.