Seminar sessions are held on Fridays from 3 to 5 pm at the Newberry, 60 West Walton Street, Chicago, Illinois.
This seminar provides a forum for works in progress that explore the history of working class people, communities, and culture; class and state policy; unions and popular political movements; and other related topics. We are particularly interested in works that deal with gender, sexuality, race, migration, and the social history of work. Our focus has been on U.S. history, but we welcome papers on North America generally, and on transnational aspects of labor history.
To apply to present during the 2014-2015 academic year, see our Call for Proposals.
The seminar’s co-sponsors are the history departments of DePaul University, Northern Illinois University, Northwestern University, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, The Karla Scherer Center for the Study of American Culture at the University of Chicago, the Department of History and Political Science at Purdue University Calumet, the Roosevelt University Department of History and Center for New Deal Studies, and LABOR: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas.
Rosemary Feurer, Northern Illinois University; Leon Fink, University of Illinois at Chicago; and Erik Gellman, Roosevelt University coordinated the 2013-14 seminar.
To attend, please read our Registration Information. To see a listing of past seminars, please select a year below:
2012-2013 | 2011-2012 | 2010-2011 | 2009-2010 | 2008-2009 | 2007-2008
Seminar Schedule
“The Elusive Postwar Boom: Detroit Autoworkers in the 1950s”
Jonathan Sperber, University of Missouri
“’A Precedent Worth Setting’: The U.S. Military and Humanitarian Operations”
“Immigration, Coalition, and Black-Brown Working-Class Politics in Chicago”
“’They are possessed of a gambling spirit’: Risk, Working-Class Individualism, and Anti-Unionism among the Metal Miners of Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma, 1890-1946”
“Children of Israel: The Faith, Politics, and Crises of Petro-Wealth in Depression-Era Texas”
“Sex and the ILO: Seafarers, Emigrants, and the Politics of Protection”