Eric Leif Davin

Eric Leif Davin is an American historian and author known for his work on labor history, political movements, and early science fiction.

Eric Leif Davin
Born	Dyersburg, Tennessee
Nationality	American
Alma mater	University of Pittsburgh
Occupation(s)	Historian, Author

Eric Leif Davin

Early life and education

Davin was born in Dyersburg, Tennessee.^[1] He studied at the Harvard Graduate School of Education from 1972 to 1973. Davin also studied drama at the Loeb Drama Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He acted on the Loeb’s Main Stage and directed plays in its Experimental Theater. In 1973, Davin ran for the Cambridge School Committee focusing on issues such as student rights, teacher accountability, and the equitable distribution of resources within the Cambridge public school system. The Harvard Crimson covered his campaign and later published his 1974 critique of educator Christopher Jencks.^[2][3][4]

Davin earned an M.A. in history in 1989 and completed his Ph.D. in American history from the University of Pittsburgh in 1999.^[5]

Career

Davin joined the University of Pittsburgh faculty in 1980 as an instructor in the Department of English. He later became a lecturer in the Department of History. From 1987 until his retirement in 2020, he taught courses on American history and popular culture at the university.^[6]

From the late 1970s through the 1980s, Davin worked in journalism and radio. He was managing editor of the Civil Liberties Record at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Pennsylvania, and hosted The Weekly Reader News Magazine on WYEP-FM in Pittsburgh from 1980 to 1985. He also contributed to publications including City Times and The Pittsburgh New Sun, and was later consulted for reference works such as American Working-Class Literature.

Writings

Davin has written on American labor history, political activism, and early science fiction. In 1999, he published Pioneers of Wonder: Conversations with the Founders of Science Fiction, a collection of interviews with early writers in the genre.^[7][8][9] His 2006 book, Partners in Wonder: Women and the Birth of Science Fiction, 1926–1965, discussed the role of women writers and fans in shaping science fiction during the pulp magazine era.^[10][11]

In 2010, Davin published Crucible of Freedom: Workers’ Democracy in the Industrial Heartland, 1914–1960, which examined labor union activities and political participation among steel and mining workers in western Pennsylvania and their influence on labor policy during the New Deal era.^[12][13] This was followed by Radicals in Power: The New Left Experience in Office (2012), a study of former 1960s activists who later held public office.^[14]

Davin’s short fiction stories have appeared in Galaxy’s Edge, Far Frontiers, and anthologies including The Year’s Best Military SF and Space Opera (2015), which featured “Icarus at Noon,” and The Year’s Best Military and Adventure SF, which included his story “Twilight on Olympus.^{[15][16][17][18]}

Lawsuit

The lawsuit Eric Davin v. U.S. Department of Justice, 60 F.3d 1043 (3d Cir. 1995) concerned Eric Davin's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for records related to the Workers Alliance of America (WAA). Davin successfully challenged the FBI’s withholding of documents under the Freedom of Information Act. The case was ultimately decided by the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals. Davin sought these records to further his research into the WAA, a significant organization during the Great Depression that advocated for the unemployed and organized protests and relief efforts. His FOIA request aimed to uncover the extent of FBI surveillance and investigation into the WAA, which was a common practice for government agencies monitoring perceived subversive groups during that era.^[19][20][21]

The Third Circuit reversed a lower court ruling because the FBI’s Vaughn index, used to justify redactions, was overly vague and failed to provide enough factual specificity to allow meaningful judicial review. The court emphasized that the FBI’s categorical, coded explanations did not meet FOIA’s requirement for detailed justification.^[22]

This decision underscored the judiciary's role in ensuring government transparency and preventing the over-application of FOIA exemptions, especially when historical records are involved.

Awards

• Golden Quill Awards for newspaper and radio journalism (1981,1983, 1984)^[23]
• Parsec Short Story Contest, 1st Place (1995)^[24]
• Bryant Spann Memorial Prize in Literature, Eugene V. Debs Foundation (1997)^[25]

Publications

Memoirs

• Fight the Power: A Memoir of the Sixties (2008)
• Orphans of the Storm: A Shared Memoir of the Radical Seventies (2020)
• Walk Like A Man: A Memoir of Machismo (2023)
• Hope in a Long Winter: A Memoir of Cambridge in the Seventies (2023)
• Falling Furnaces: A Movement Memoir of the Steel City (2024)
• Inside the Casino (2024)

Poetry

• That Fat Cat (2021)
• Barricades Burning (2021)

Fiction

Novels

• The Desperate and the Dead (2014)
• The Scarlet Queen (2016)
• The Great Strike of 1877 (2018)
• The Paterson Strike Pageant: An IWW Novel of Bohemia and Insurgent Labor (2019)
• Los Desperados (2021)
• Solidarity: An IWW Novel of the Steel City (2022)
• Outlaws in Amerika: A Story of the Radical Seventies (2023)
• Epicharus: A Story of Resistance in Ancient Rome (2024)
• Desperada (2025)

Short Story Collections

• Sweet Sorrows & Violent Delights: Fantasy & Science Fiction (2009)
• More Sorrows & Delights: Fantasy & Science Fiction (2021)
• Delectus: An Exaltation of Unremembered Tales (2022)

Non-fiction

Major Works

• Pioneers of Wonder: Conversations With the Founders of Science Fiction (1999)
• Partners in Wonder: Women and the Birth of Science Fiction, 1926–1965 (2006)
• Crucible of Freedom: Workers’ Democracy in the Industrial Heartland, 1914–1960 (2010)
• Radicals in Power: The New Left Experience in Office (2012)

Additional Works

• "Petroglyphs of Wupatki," in Southwestern Lore: Journal of the Colorado Archaeological Society (1973)
• "The Very Last Hurrah: The Defeat of the Labor Party Idea, 1934–1936," in We Are All Leaders: The Alternative Unionism of the Early 1930s (1996)
• What Is Feminism?: A Short Introduction to Main Problems in American Women's History (2009)
• Picket Line & Ballot Box: The Forgotten Legacy of the Labor Party Movement, 1932–1936 (2018)
• Question Authority: Writings from the Free School Movement, 1971–1975 (2021)
• Anarchist Mexico: Ricardo Flores Magón and La Casa del Obero in the Mexican Revolution (2022)
• This Is What Democracy Looks Like: Essays on American Politics (2022)
• A Forlorn Hope: Third Parties and American Political Ideology (2022)
• The Year of Hope and Fear: Insurrection and Repression, 1919 (2022)
• Words Property of the People: Politics and the Poetry of Genevieve Taggard (2022)
• Nothing in the Night: The Unnoticed 1054 Crab Supernova and the Great Schism (2022)
• Double Genesis: Locke, Jesus, and American Populism (2022)
• Fantastic Speculations: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction (2022)
• American Workers, 1800–1900: An Overview (2023)
• Mundane Meanderings: Writings on Art, History, and Politics (2023)
• Medieval Genesis: The Peace of God, The Commune, and the Birth of the Modern World (2023)
• Left Profiles: Close Encounters of the Radical Kind (2023)
• American Her-Story: Major Questions in U.S. Women's History (2023)
• The Death of Deputy Dawg: The True Story of a Police Murder (2023)
• Three Essays on Working Class Literature (2024)
• American Workers, 1900–2000: An Overview (2024)
• Writers of Wonder: Early Science Fiction Writers on Their Craft (2025)