The Newberry Seminar in Labor History

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.

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.

Co-cordinators this year are Rosemary Feurer, Northern Illinois University; Leon Fink, University of Illinois at Chicago; Erik Gellman, Roosevelt University; and Liesl Orenic, Dominican University.

The Labor History Seminar 2016-2017 Call for Proposals is now closed. Proposals for 2017-2018 will open in February 2017. To submit a proposal, please visit our webform and upload a one-page proposal, a statement explaining the relationship of the paper to your other work, and a brief CV. Applications will not be accepted via email or in hard copy.

To attend, please read our Registration Information. Sign up to receive email updates about the Labor History seminar. View our flyer for a PDF version of the schedule.

To see a listing of past seminars, please select a year below:

2015-2016 | 2014-2015 | 2013-2014 | 2012-2013 | 2011-2012 | 2010-2011 | 2009-2010 | 2008-2009 | 2007-2008