Geoffrey Pollick

Ph.D., Drew University

Geoffrey Pollick serves as Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies and as Associate Professor of Religious Studies. He also directs the Highlanders Pipes and Drums music ensemble and serves as instructor of the great Highland bagpipe.

Dr. Pollick teaches courses that explore broad questions of religion’s meanings and uses, including comparative studies of religious difference; surveys of Judaism and Islam in America; the relationship between religious identity and healthcare; and advanced courses that consider American religious history, religious freedom, and the relationship between religion and culture, and researches the history and culture of religion in the United States and North America.

He works closely with students completing the Religious Diversity for Care 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 work with an undergraduate research assistant, who co-presented with Dr. Pollick on a project that documents 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; 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. In addition, he helps to lead the Radford University Community History Research Collective.

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.

Selected Publications and Public Writing

“Biography of Luella F. Smith McWhirter (1859–1952),” in Online Biographical Dictionary of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the United States, Part III, Mainstream Suffragists—National American Woman Suffrage Association, edited by Thomas Dublin and Kathryn Kish Sklar (Alexandria, VA: Alexander Street Publishers/ProQuest, 2021).
“Biography of Annis Ford Eastman (1852–1910),” in Online Biographical Dictionary of the Woman Suffrage Movement in the United States, Part III, Mainstream Suffragists—National American Woman Suffrage Association, edited by Thomas Dublin and Kathryn Kish Sklar (Alexandria, VA: Alexander Street Publishers/ProQuest, 2020).
“A Robot’s Realissimum: Religion, Psychology, and Technology in Westworld,” The Revealer: A Review of Religion and Media (November 16, 2018).
“Radix Redux: Characterizing American Religious Radicalism,” review of American Prophets: Seven Religious Radicals and Their Struggle for Social and Political Justice, by Albert J. Raboteau, The Revealer: A Review of Religion and Media (October 17, 2017).
“Excursions in Unbelief: Retrieving Religion’s ‘Antitype’ in U.S. History,” review of Village Atheists: How America’s Unbelievers Made Their Way in a Godly Nation, by Leigh Eric Schmidt, The Revealer: A Review of Religion and Media (September 8, 2017).

Selected Presentations, Papers and Media Commentary

2026: “Remembering with Courage, Reimagining with Purpose: Educating for Democracy by Confronting History, Cultivating Transformative Change,” January 22, panelist, with Kirt von Daacke, Sarah Reardon, and Caroline Emmons, held at the annual meeting of the American Association of Colleges and Universities, Washington, DC.
2025: “Transformative Collaboration: Universities Studying Slavery, Philanthropic Partnerships, and the Possibilities for Visionary Educational Change in the 21st Century,” October 12, panelist, with Kirt von Daacke, Sarah Reardon, and Caroline Emmons, held at Second Foundings, the annual conference of the Universities Studying Slavery Consortium, Rice University, Houston, TX.
2024: “Narrative, Memory, Identity: Acknowledging Institutional Ties to Enslavement in Appalachia,” March 8, presentation at Appalachian Studies Association, Cullowhee, NC.
2023: with Aysha Bodenhamer, “Masculinity, Religiosity, Vulnerability: Explaining Experiences of Black Lung Disease in Central Appalachia,” March 16–19, paper presented at Appalachian Studies Association, Athens, OH.
2022: “Apparent Invisibility: Religio-Racial Place-Making, History, and Memory in Virginia’s New River Valley, from the Nineteenth Century to the Present,” November 4, Public Spaces, Private Places: Constructing Race and Liberation, Biennial Interdisciplinary Conference on Race, Monmouth University, NJ.
2022: "Understanding Arnheim: Religio-Racial Place-Making in the New River Valley of Virginia, 1838–1887," October 22, Mountains, Rivers, and Roads: Understanding Appalachia Symposium, Honors College, Radford University, VA.
2020: “Ordination as Emancipation: Voting Rights Activism and Women’s Religious Professions in the Early Twentieth-Century United States,” September 17, paper accepted for Snapshot 20/20 Symposium in April, 2020, rescheduled as Constitution Day public lecture, delivered remotely via video webcast, Meredith College, Raleigh, NC.
2019: "The Spiritual and the Secular in Modern American Painting: Max Eastman and the Ashcan School,” September 4, September Series research presentation, College of Humanities and Behavioral Sciences, Radford University, VA.
2018: “Visualizing the ‘Poetry of Life’: Reconfiguring Religion through the Ashcan School of American Painters in the Pages of The Masses,” March 23, paper presented at Biennial Conference on the History of Religion, Boston College, Boston, MA.