Welcome

Eric Swank is an Associate Professor of Social Work at Morehead State University. He received his Ph.D. and M.A. from the Ohio State University and a BS from San Diego State University.

Eric’s research mainly focuses on the ways that hierarchies are produced, maintained and challenged. In his first years at Morehead, Swank's studies centered on different aspects of antiwar activism. In an ethnographic piece he wrote about the "sense of efficacy" among Gulf War protesters while a content analysis looked at the way these protesters were portrayed in the mainstream media (Critical Sociology, Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change). Later, Swank address the way in which welfare policies are formed by corporate interests and poor people (one group uses campaign donations and highly financed think tanks while the other must resort to the street politics of demonstrations and riots). In keeping with the welfare theme, Swank also used survey data to asses the relationships between the acceptance of punitive welfare policies and the support "color-blind racism" and traditional gender roles (Journal or Poverty).

Most recently Eric has explored the amount of heterosexism among Social Work students and Central Appalachians (Journal of Social Work Education, Journal of Homosexuality, American Journal of Sexuality Education). In all of these pieces Swank has been interested in how schooling, contact with homosexuals and attribution processes reinforce compulsorary heterosexuality. In 2008 Swank won the Riley Carney Scholarship to the Interntional LGTB Summer Institute at the University of Michigan.

In the classroom Swank often teaches in the research tract. For a discussion of what these classes entail please click on the classes link above.