A native of Buffalo, NY Dr. Edward Janak received his B.A. (English) from SUNY-Fredonia and both M.Ed. (Secondary Education) and Ph.D. (Foundations of Education) from the University of South Carolina. He taught high school in South Carolina for almost a decade before moving into academia: Currently, he is a professor and chair of the Department of Educational Studies at the University of Toledo. He describes himself as having a day job (a scholar of historical foundations of education and educational life writing) and a night job (providing avenues for studies of popular culture in education). His current line of research during his day job explores the intersection of General Education Board funding on historically marginalized populations in the US West, while his night job finds him examining the role of popular culture texts as both informal and formal educational media.
Dr. Andrew Grunzke holds a Ph.D. in Foundations of Education (2007) and an MA in English (2006) from the University of Florida. With more than a decade of experience in higher education, he is currently an associate professor of education in the School of Education at the University of Guam/Unibetsedảt Guảhan. He also has four years of public middle grades and secondary teaching experience in both mathematics and language arts, serving students at risk of dropping out and students who had been recommended for expulsion. His research interests focus on the history of children’s media and representations of education in popular media. His first book, Educational Institutions in Horror Film: A History of Mad Professors, Student Bodies, and Final Exams, looked at the ways that school violence was portrayed in a variety of different educational institutions across different historical eras. He recently published Education and the Female Superhero for Lexington Books.
Dr. Jacob Hardesty is Dean of the College of Social Sciences, Commerce, and Education, and is an Associate Professor of Education at Rockford University. He completed his doctorate degree in 2013 at Indiana University in educational history and has a B.M. in Music Education from Ithaca College and an M.A. in Ethnomusicology from the University of Limerick, Ireland. His work has appeared in the High Ability Studies, American Educational History Journal, and the History of Education Quarterly, and edited volumes. Before Rockford, he taught music for four years in public and Catholic schools, as well as education courses at DePauw University and Indiana University. Dr. Hardesty’s primary research interest involves the historical connections and tensions between popular culture and public education. He explores educators’ perceptions and responses toward the impact jazz would have on young people in the 1920s.
The Civil Religion Playlist 