The Newberry Seminar in

Labor History

Co-sponsored by the History Departments of Northern Illinois University, Northwestern University, the University of Illinois at Chicago, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the Labor and Working Class History Association

Seminars are held on Fridays from 3:00–5:00 PM
at the Newberry Library,
60 West Walton Street, Chicago, Illinois.
Papers are pre-circulated. For a copy e-mail scholl[at]newberry.org.

2009-2010

September 25, 2009— "Perplexities Enough": The Bodies and Minds of Working Class Women
Caroline Merithew, University of Dayton
Commentators:  Susan Levine, University of Illinois at Chicago and Christine Stansell, University of Chicago

In “Perplexities Enough:" The Bodies and Minds of Working Class Women, I look at how working class women described, experienced, used, and rhetorically constructed their bodies and minds for power in the first half of the twentieth century. I compare these sensibilities as workers with their middle class contemporaries’ constructions of them. My analysis draws on recent discussions in labor history which view the body as a possible avenue for integrating materialism and linguistic analysis to bring into focus female subjects. Ava Baron and Eileen Boris, for example, have called for studies which center the body in the practice of labor history to, among other things, dislodge the male physical form as paradigmatic. The paper brings together two strands of research which connect my scholarship in coal mining women and, in turn, more recent interest in labor education.

October 9, 2009— Chicago Traders and Transnational Labor During the Long War for the West
Ann Keating, North Central College
Commentators:  Fred Hoxie, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Joe Bigott, Purdue University Calumet
*Please note: the October 9th seminar meeting will be held in Altgeld Hall, Room 203, on the campus of Northern Illinois University in DeKalb. For directions to NIU's campus, click here.

November 14, 2009— Saturday Symposium: Consumers—The Unknown Social Movement
Debating Lawrence Glickman's, Buying Power: A History of Consumer Activism in America (University of Chicago Press, 2009).
Featuring author Lawrence Glickman, University of South Carolina
Commentators:  Nan Enstad, University of Wisconsin Madison; Adam Green, University of Chicago; Susan Levine, University of Illinois at Chicago;  Nancy MacLean, Northwestern University; and Rick Perlstein, author of Nixonland
Please Note: The Saturday Symposium will be held from 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM

December 11, 2009— "For All Those Bending Years": IRCA, the Dog War, and the Campaign to Turn International Temps into Immigrants
Cindy Hahamovitch, College of William and Mary
Commentators:  Nancy MacLean, Northwestern University, and Will Jones, University of Wisconsin—Madison

 January 15, 2010— Not Right: Progressive Era Liberals and Open Shoppery
Chad Pearson, University of Alabama
Commentators: Shelton Stronquist, University of Iowa, and Rosemary Feuer, Northern Illinois University

February 5, 2010— Why They Were Members of a Teachers Union: College Faculty and the AFT
Timothy Cain, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Commentators:  Lisa Philips, Indiana State University, and Steve Vaughn, Illinois Education Association

March 12, 2010— Unionism and Civil Rights in the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU): Bridging Activism from the 1940s to the 1960s in the San Francisco Bay Area
Jess Rigelhaupt, University of Mary Washington
Commentators:  Edmund Wehrle, Eastern Illinois University, and John Rosen, University of Illinois at Chicago

May 7, 2010 — The War of the Monkey Jackets: Anglo-American Trade, Cheap Goods,
and the Panic of 1819
Scott Nelson, College of William and Mary
Commentators:  Bruce Levine, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and James Schmidt, Northern Illinois University