Program

Thursday, May 20, 6 – 8 pm ET

Opening Night Plenary

College for All and a National Agenda for Labor in Higher
Education

This summit brings together LAWCHA members, labor activists, Scholars
for a New Deal for Higher Education (SFNDHE), and union representatives
serving a variety of higher ed workers to discuss the College for All
bill and how to use it as a foundation for a bottom-up national
movement, one that demands fair funding, fair tuition, and fair labor.
SFNDHE successfully fought to include labor provisions that prioritize
contingent faculty and tenure-track positions in the College for All
bill–but there is still more to be done. LAWCHA members, as labor
scholars, higher ed workers, and union organizers, have a vital role to
play in this national agenda and the federal legislative battles ahead.

Endorsed by the LAWCHA Contingent Faculty Committee

Higher Education Union Representatives TBA
Jalil Mustaffa Bishop, Postdoctoral Fellow at University of
Pennsylvania and SFNDHE member
Ian Gavigan, PhD candidate at Rutgers University-New Brunswick
Aimee Loiselle, SFNDHE Co-Facilitator and
Postdoctoral Fellow at Smith College
Eleni Schirmer, PhD Candidate at University of
Wisconsin-Madison
Moderator: Lane Windham, Georgetown University

Friday, May 21, 12 – 1:15 pm ET

The Personal is Historical: Incorporating Family Legacies and
Personal Experience into Labor History

Toni Gilpin, Independent Scholar
Sergio M. González, Assistant Professor of Latinx Studies, Marquette
University
Jack Metzgar, Emeritus Professor of Humanities, Roosevelt University
Chicago
David Ranney, Professor Emeritus, University of Illinois Chicago
Beryl Satter, Professor of History, Rutgers University-Newark
Christine Walley, Professor of Anthropology, Massachusetts Institute
of Technology

Working People and (Human) Capital: Class, Race, and Education in
Twentieth Century America

Human Capital, Summer Riots, and Disciplining Black Resistance:
1965-68, Mahasan Chaney, Brown University
Historicizing Workplace Power and the Limits of Human Capital,
Cristina Groeger, Lake Forest College
“Putting (Some) People First”: Reinventing Democrats and Workers in
the Global Knowledge Economy, Jon Shelton, University of
Wisconsin-Green Bay
Chair/Commentator: Jeffrey Helgeson, Texas State University

The “Frontline” at Home: Domestic Workers as Essential Workers

Joan Flores-Villalobos, University of Southern California
Anasa Hicks, Florida State University
Anna Jakubek, Arise Chicago (Domestic Worker Organizer)
Emma Amador, University of Connecticut
Premilla Nadasen, Barnard College
Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, University of Southern California

From the Prison to the Pandemic: Histories of Criminalization,
Migration, andEssential Work in the U.S. and Europe

Policing Precarity: The Criminalization of Spectacle Work at the
1984 Los Angeles Olympics, David Helps, University of Michigan
Where Domestic and Penal Labor Meet: The National Domestic Workers
Union and Georgia’s Work Release Program, Eshe Sherley, University
of Michigan
Working under the threat of Covid-19: West-African low-wage workers
in New York City, Kalilou Barry, Paris-Est Créteil University
Discipline and Diversity: Forced Labor Inside New York City’s
Nineteenth-Century Carceral State, Michael Haggerty, University of
California Davis
Migrant Workers in Slovakia and the Covid-19 Crisis, Benjamin
Sorensen, Cape FearCommunity College Chair/Commentator: John
Enyeart, Bucknell University

High Tech as Management Ideology and Workplace Praxis

The Paradox of Automation: QWERTY and the Neuter Keyboard, Jason
Resnikoff, Columbia University
“The Machine is Neutral”: Imperial Wars in Southeast Asia: American
Tech Workers and Silicon Valley Internationalism, 1967-1980,
Jeannette Estruth, Bard College
Grand Illusions: Clinton Intellectuals and the Idea of the “High
Performance” Workplace, Nelson Lichtenstein, UC Santa Barbara
Chair/Commentator: Brishen Rogers, Temple University Law School

On the Margins of Labor and Capital: Shifting Social Identities in
the Global South

Becoming pobladores: Identity and Place Making in Santiago, Chile,
1872-1950 Denisa Jashari, University of North Carolina, Greensboro
Korean Women Workers and Social Reproduction in the Japanese
Countryside after World War I, Wendy Matsumura, University of
California, San Diego
Revolutionary Encounters in the Countryside: Spanish Exiles, Mexican
Peasants, and Rural Colonization Initiatives, Kevan Aguilar,
University of California, San Diego
Chair/Commentator: Barbara Weinstein, New York University

Histories of Unions at the University of Illinois at Chicago

Cathleen Jensen, SEIU Local 73
Paul Pater, Illinois Nurses Association
Jeff Schuhrke, University of Illinois at Chicago
Janet Smith, UIC United Faculty
Chair: Robert D. Johnston, UIC United Faculty

Management, Vigilantism, and Repression from the Civil War to the
1930s

Murder on the Border 1865: The Last Battle of the Civil War as a
Matter of Company Security, Mark Lause, University of Cincinnati
Why we must call the first Ku Klux Klan an Employers’ Association,
Chad Pearson, Collin College
The Chamber of Commerce in Action: Employer Violence in Pacific
Northwest History, Aaron Goings, St. Martin’s University
Chair/Commentator: Elaine Frantz, Kent State University

Union and Worker Responses to Police Brutality and State/Corporate
Repression in the Early to Mid 20th Century

“Police Brutally Beat Girls Who Strike Against Garment Shop
Starvation Wages”: The Sopkins Factory Strike, 1933, Janette Gayle,
Hobart & William Smith Colleges
Footloose Under Lock and Key: Policing Pacific Northwestern Migrant
Workers in the Early Twentieth Century, Elizabeth Pingree, Boston
College
Bloody Sticks and Working Class Martyrs: Responses to
Police/Corporate Brutality During the Great Depression by Labor
Organizers, James Robinson, Rutgers University
To Slay the “Beast of Reaction”: The IWW, the East Coast Maritime
Strike of 1936 and its Repression, Matt White, The Ohio State
University

Friday, May 21, 1:45 – 3 pm ET

Working-class Coalitions and the Emerging Neoliberal Order,
1970-1990

“A New Bracero Program”: Mexican American Resistance to Neoliberal
Immigration Reform, Eladio B. Bobadilla, University of Kentucky
“Homeless and Jobless”: Organizing for Justice, Dignity, & Reform in
the Neoliberal City, Allyson P. Brantley, University of La Verne
Progressive Triangulation: Industrial Conversion, Municipal
Politics, and Labor’s Electoral Strategy in Los
Angeles, Tobias Higbie and Gaspar Rivera Salgado, University of
California, Los Angeles
Chair/Commentator: Grace Davie, Queens College, CUNY

Hot Off The Press!: A University of Illinois Press Showcase

Alison K. Syring, University of Illinois Press
Dana M. Caldemeyer, South Georgia State College
Tom Alter, Texas State University
Nick Juravich, University of Massachusetts Boston
Jenny Carson, Ryerson University
Dawson Barrett, Del Mar College

Academic Labor Union Density Growth (2013-2019) in Perspective

William A. Herbert, Hunter College, CUNY
Jacob Apkarian, York College, CUNY
Joseph van der Naald, PhD candidate, CUNY Graduate School
Claire Goldstene, LAWCHA Committee on Contingent Faculty Chair
Robert D. Johnston, University of Illinois at Chicago

Comparative Approaches to Labor History: Canada, Brazil, and the
United States

The Emergence of a Slave Labor System in 16th Century Brazil and
Colonial Virginia, Sofia Cutler, Yale University
Separations and Strange Bedfellows: Labor and the New Left in the
United States and Canada, Barry Eidlin, McGill University
“The Canadian Jimmy Hoffa”: Hal Banks and a Comparative Perspective
on the Issue of Union Corruption, David Witwer, Penn State
Harrisburg
Chair/Commentator: Dorothy Sue Cobble, Rutgers University

Agrarian Crusades: Interracialism and Cultural Politics in the Late
Nineteenth-Century South

“Are Not Our Interests the Same?”: Black Protest, the Lost Cause,
and Coalition Building in Readjuster Virginia, Bryant K. Barnes,
University of Georgia
John Brown’s Bodies: Civil War Memory and Interracial Class Politics
in “the Other South,” Matthew E. Stanley, Albany State University
“Big Landholders” versus “Three Classes” of Farmers: The Rise and
Fall of Populism inGwinnett County, Georgia, 1873-1896
Matthew Hild, Georgia Institute of Technology
Chair/Commentator: Jane Dailey, University of Chicago

Visual Culture and Struggle in Latin and Latinx America

The Bisexual Erasure of Emiliano Zapata: Art, Censorship, and
Revolutionary Struggle in Mexico, Robert Franco, Washington
University in St. Louis
The Revolutionary Art of Rosendo Salazar: Anarchism, Muralism and
State Ideology, Rosalía Romero, Pomona College
Visualizing Juana Colón: Archival Power and the Struggle for
Remembrance in Puerto Rico, Jorell MeléndezBadillo, Dartmouth
College
Chair: Kevan Antonio Aguilar, UC San Diego
Commentator: Alexander Aviña, Arizona State University

Gig Work in the Woods – The Long History of Contingent Logging Work
in Maine’s Woods, 1850-2020

Pulling the Strings in Maine’s Forests, 1940–2000, Michael G.
Hillard, University of Southern Maine
I will be a farmer until I take a job: Agrarian Independence and
Contract Labor in Rural New England and New
York, 1850-1930, Jason Newton, University of North
Carolina–Charlotte
The Struggle Continues – Maine Loggers’ Recent Gains, Troy Jackson,
Maine State Senate
Chair/Commentator: Elizabeth Tandy-Shermer, Loyola University of
Chicago

Saturday, May 22, 12 – 1:15 pm ET

Anti-Apartheid Organizing and the Long Civil Rights Movement in the
United States: Corporate Research, Bank Campaigns, and the Push for
Sanctions

From Shareholder Activism to Trade Union Corporate Campaigns: How
the International Anti-Apartheid Movement Reshaped the American
Left, Grace Davie, Queens College, CUNY
“Redline South Africa, Not Lawndale and Chicago’s Black West Side!”:
The 1977-88 Anti-Apartheid Bank Campaign, Prexy Nesbitt, Chapman
University
“Radicals in a Broader Sense”: Anti-Apartheid Politics and the Long
Arm of the Civil Rights Movement, Leon Fink, University of Illinois
at Chicago
Chair/Commentator: Alex Lichtenstein, Indiana University

Writing Puerto Rican Labor History: A Discussion of ‘Colonial
Migrants at the Heart of Empire’

Emma Amador, University of Connecticut, Storrs
Ismael Garcia-Colón, College of Staten Island and CUNY Graduate
Center
Eileen Findlay, American University
Carmen Whalen, Williams College
Jorell Melendez-Badillo, Dartmouth College
Delia Fernandez, Michigan State University

Metzgar’s Striking Steel: A Twenty Year Retrospective

Tracy Neumann, Wayne State University
Gabriel Winant, University of Chicago
Samir Sonti, CUNY
Jefferson Cowie, Vanderbilt University
Jack Metzgar, Roosevelt Universtiy (retired)
Christine Walley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Broadcasting the Working Class: A Podcast and Community Radio
Workshop

Maximillian Alvarez, The Real News Network
Judy Ancel, KKFI, Kansas City Community Radio
Patrick Dixon, Georgetown University
Jerry Mead-Lucero, Labor Express Radio
Liz Medina, Vermont State Labor Council, AFL-CIO
Alan Wierdak, University of Maryland

Canaries in the Coal Mine: Sex Workers at the Front Lines

Angela Jones, SUNY Farmingdale
Heather Berg, Washington University St. Louis
Lindsay Blewett, York University
femi babylon, writer and artist
Emily Coombes, University of Nevada Las Vegas
Velvet, Sex Workers Outreach Project
Chair/Commentator: Melinda Chateauvert, Front Porch Research
Strategy

Walls, Bars, and Fences: Incarcerated Workers in Canada’s Past and
Present

From Camps to the Streets: Direct Action During the Great
Depression, Mikhail Bjorge, University of Toronto
Prisoner Unionization in Canada, Jordan House, Brock University
Working Over Canada’s First National Internment Operations,
Kassandra Luciuk, University ofToronto
Chair/Commentator: Paul Gray, Brock University

Saturday, May 22, 1:45 – 3 pm ET

New Directions in Faith, Labor, and the Common Good

Dan Graff, University of Notre Dame
Karen Kent, Unite Here Local 1, Chicago
Sr. Emily TeKolste, SP, NETWORK Lobby for Catholic SocialJustice
Kevin Hawkins, US Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service
James Franczek, Jr., Franczek P.C.
Chair/Commentator: Heath Carter, Princeton Theological Seminary

Red, Green, and International

Cindy Domingo, Legacy of Equality Leadership and Organizing
Carrie Freshour, Geography, University of Washington, Seattle
Rosalinda Guillen, Community to Community
Alina R. Méndez, University of Washington, Seattle
Michael Schulze-Oechtering, Western Washington University

Teaching Labor’s Story: Writing Workshop

Nikki Mandell, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater
Randi Storch, SUNY Cortland
Rosemary Feurer, Northern Illinois University
Emily Lieb, Seattle University
Lisa Phillips, Indiana State University
Nick Juravich, UMass Boston
Cecelia Bucki, Fairfield University

The Home as an Essential Workplace

Northern Households, Immigrant Domestic Workers, and the Immigration
and Naturalization Act of 1965, Eileen Boris, University of
California at Santa Barbara
“A First-Rate Seamstress For Sale”: Gender, Slavery, and the
Contested Meaning of Home, Alexandra Finley, University of
Pittsburgh
Fashioning Community: Black “At Home” Dressmakers in Early Twentieth
Century New York City, Janette Gayle, Hobart & William Smith
Colleges
Political Homework: Latina Labors and Political Activisms,
1930-1960, Sarah McNamara,Texas A&M University
Bargaining for “Work and Family”: Labor Defines Work-Family Benefits
and the Meaning of Home, Kirsten Swinth, Fordham University
Chair/Commentator: Katherine Turk, University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill

Entangled Histories of Racial Capitalism in the United States and
South Africa

Strings Attached: Coke Money and the Student Divestment Movement in
Atlanta, Amanda Joyce Hall, Yale University
Not the country for cheap white labour: U.S. Mining Engineers and
the Elaboration of Racial Capitalism in South Africa, 1889-1910,
Doug Jones, University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign
Beyond Desegregation: Waging a Battle Against Apartheid in the South
African Workplace, Mattie Webb, University of California, Santa
Barbara
The American-African Affairs Association and the Conservative Case
for South Africa Kelsey L. Zavelo, Duke University
Chair/Commentator: Jessica Ann Levy, SUNY-Purchase

Essential in the City: Working People and Organized Labor in Times of
Urban Crisis

Empire in Need: Scales of Struggle in 1970s Seattle, Andrew Hedden,
University of Washington
Fighting for the Working Class City: Retired Workers, Organized
Labor, and Redevelopment in San Francisco, Laura Renata Martin,
South Puget Sound Community College
Public Sector Unions and in the Re-Articulation of Essential Work in
the 1975 New York City Fiscal Crisis, Michael Beyea Reagan,
University of Washington
Mutual Aid and the Hierarchy of Care: Organizing Care Work in
Capital’s Crises, JM Wong, Office of Civil Rights
Chair/Commentator: Katie Wilson, Transit Riders Union in Seattle

Networks of Working-Class Organization in the American Midwest,
1900-1970

Millions of Honest Workingmen: Reconstructing Socialist Networks in
Chicago, 1900-1917, Natalie Behrends, Harvard University
The Kansas City Solidarity Infrastructure: Articulating Class
Interests with Progressive Allies in the 1910s, Jeff Stilley,
University of Missouri
Red Detroit: Revolutionaries, Labor Organizers, and Communists in
the Motor City During the 1970s, Kenneth Alyass, Harvard University
Chair/Commentator: Traci Parker, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Saturday, May 22, 8 – 10 pm ET

Plenary

Essential Workers in the Food Industry during the Pandemic

The early weeks of the pandemic seemed to teach a general lesson about
“essential labor,” a lesson that seems to have been largely forgotten
since. In the meantime, the struggle to raise the federal minimum wage
continues, despite the recent setback. This panel considers the
possibilities of organizing in fast food and other restaurants, as a
particularly militant part of the US working class historically, and
today.

Mohamed Attia, Executive Director, Street Vendor Project
Dorothy Sue Cobble, Distinguished Professor Emerita of History and
Labor Studies, Rutgers University
Ryan Coffel, Colectivo Collective Union Organizer
Carlos Enriquez, Restaurant Organizing Project, Democratic Socialists
of America
Ben Wilkins, Organizing Director, NC Raise Up

Monday, May 24, 4:30 – 5:30 pm ET

Writing and Teaching a Labor History of Contingent Faculty (Joint Session with UALE)

Monday, May 24, 8 – 10 pm ET

LAWCHA/UALE Cultural Event: A Night of Poetry and Music

Tuesday, May 25, 12 – 3 pm ET

LAWCHA Board Meeting

Tuesday, May 25, 8 – 10 pm ET

UALE/LAWCHA Plenary: 9 to 5

We will gather with the United Association of Labor Educators for a
screening and roundtable discussion of Julia Reichert and Steve Bognar’s
documentary film, 9to5: Story of A Movement.

Wednesday, May 26, 6 – 7:30 pm ET

LAWCHA Member Meeting

The LAWCHA Membership Meeting will begin with a short greeting from an
organizer of the B’Amazon Union Council of RWDSU, which is
supporting the organization of workers at Amazon warehouses in Bessemer
and across the South. The meeting will also include the announcement of
this year’s LAWCHA Distinguished Service to Labor History Award and
other prizes, and a discussion of LAWCHA’s future led by Vice President
Cindy Hahamovitch.

Thursday, May 27, 12 – 1:15 pm ET

Public Sector Workers on the Front Lines of Democratic Existence

Gender & Politics among Federal Indian Service Employees, 1800-1930,
Cathleen D. Cahill, Penn State University
Night of the Living Dread: Public Sector Workers Can’t See Light of
Day, Frederick Gooding, Jr., TexasChristian University
“They Won’t Work for a Cop of Any Kind”: The 1970 Sanitation
Slowdown, Municipal Workers and Black Power Politics in
Philadelphia, Francis Ryan, Rutgers University
The Meaning of Teachers’ Labor in American Education: Change,
Challenge, and Resistance, Jon Shelton, University of Wisconsin –
Green Bay
“We’re the Backbone of this City”: Women & Gender in Public Work,
Katherine Turk, University of North Carolina
Sick Ins, Heal Ins, and Wildcat Strikes: Labor Organizing at
Chicago’s Public Hospital in the 1960s and Its Legacy for the 1970s,
Amy Zanoni, Southern Methodist University
Chair/Commentator: Eric S. Yellin, University of Richmond

Roundtable: On doing global labor history: challenges and benefits

Julie Greene, University of Maryland–College Park
Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, University of Southern California
Peter Cole, Western Illinois University
Moderator: Shelton Stromquist, University of Iowa

Gangsters, Deindustrialization and Labor History for the Fashion
Industry:Perspectives on New York City’s Garment District

Teaching Fashion Students About the History of the NYC Garment
District, Kyunghee Pyun, Fashion Institute of Technology
Teaching Fashion Students About the History of the NYC Garment
District, Daniel Levinson Wilk, Fashion Institute of Technology
On the Auction Block: The Garment Industry and the
Deindustrialization of New York City, Andrew Battle, Common Notions
Murder in the Garment District: The Historic Role of Labor
Racketeering in the International Ladies Garment Workers Union,
Catherine Rios, Penn State University
Chair: David Witwer, Penn State University
Commentator: Kim Phillips-Fein, New York University

Economically Essential, Medically Marginal: Latinx Migrant Worker
Health on theFront Lines of Twentieth Century U.S. Industry

Resisting Death and Dismemberment: Mexican Strategies to Secure
Compensation in the Lower Midwest, Bryan Winston, Dartmouth College
20th Century Agricultural Labor, Migrant Death, and Remembering Lost
Lives, Juan Ignacio Mora, University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana
Surviving Dairyland: Investigating How Undocumented Immigrants
Navigated WorkplaceDanger in the Rural
Midwest, 1988-2004, Dustin Cohan, University of
Wisconsin-MadisonChair: Marla A. Ramírez, University of
Wisconsin-Madison
Commentator: Chantel Rodriguez, University of Maryland

Exploring Black Power, Political Resistance, and Social Movements

Forging Radical Inclusivity: Jon Paul Hammond’s Architecture of a
World Unrealized, J.T. Roane, Arizona State University
Rethinking Black Intellectuals and the “Inner” City: Against the
Plantation to Ghetto Narrative in the US Capital, Paula C. Austin,
Boston University
“People Can’t Live in a Stadium:” Black Resistance to the Politics
of Development in Atlanta, Danielle Wiggins, California Institute of
Technology
Chair and Commentator: Marsha Barrett, University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign

Democracy in Public Sector Unions

More Whitley Than Wagner: A Canadian Public Sector Union’s
Experience with Sectoral Bargaining from 1967 to 2000, Jason
Russell, SUNY Empire State College
Democracy & Authority at Work: Public Employees in 1970s
Pennsylvania, James Young, Edinboro University
Striking and Bargaining for the Common Good: The Case of the 1970
New Haven Federation of Teachers, Alexander Kolokotronis, Yale
University
Firestorm!: Chaffey College in Crisis, 1978-1980, Lukas Gunderson,
Chaffey College
The Struggle Over The Story: Rethinking Schools, Union Democracy and
the Milwaukee Teachers’ Union, 1975-1990, Eleni Schirmer, University
of Wisconsin

Education and the Making of Working-Class Politics in Boston

We’re doing it our way: Working-Class African American and Latina
Mother-Organizers in Boston’s
Movements for Educational Justice, Tatiana M.F. Cruz, Lesley
University
Driving Against Injustice: Boston’s School Bus Drivers Union and the
Struggle for a Democratic City, Jeffrey Helgeson, Texas State
University
Class Politics and School Desegregation in Boston, 1974–1985, Greta
de Jong, University of Nevada, Reno
From Busing to Black Lives Matter: The Evolution of the Boston
Teachers Union, Nick Juravich, UMass Boston
Chair/Commentator: Zebulon Miletsky, Stony Brook University

Collective Bargaining from All Sides: Unionism, the Faculty Senate,
ContingentFaculty, and Academic Administration

Naomi R. Williams, Rutgers University
David Hamilton Golland, Governors State University
Jon E. Bekken, Albright College
Nelson Ouellet, Université de Moncton

Labor and the First Amendment: Recovering the Past, Reclaiming the
Future (Co-sponsored by UALE)

Sophia Z. Lee, University of Pennsylvania Law School
Laura Weinrib, Harvard Law School
Donna T. Haverty-Stacke, Hunter College and the Graduate Center,
City University of NewYork
Catherine Fisk, University of California, Berkeley Law
Jessica Rutter, American Federation of Teachers
Amanda Jaret, United Food and Commercial Workers

Tapping into Crises: Identity, Cultural Production, and Exploitation
in America’sHistoric Brewing Industry

Joseph B. Walzer, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Krista Grensavitch, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
John Harry, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Jacob Remes, New York University

Thursday, May 27, 1:45 – 3 pm ET

Cold War Labor: Crossing Borders, Crossing Systems

Flexible Production with Socialist Characteristics in the Soviet
Union: The Case of the Shchekino Chemical Combine, 1967-1971, James
Nealy, Duke University
From ‘Free’ Trade Unionism to Free Trade Zones: Labor
Internationalism at Cold War’s End, Jeff Schuhrke, University of
Illinois at Chicago
Reproduction and Destruction: Caring Work in America’s Cold War
Empire, Hannah Ontiveros, Duke University
Chair/Commentator: Leon Fink, Editor of Labor: Studies in
Working-Class History

Setting the Stage for Restructuring: Government, Organized Labor, and
Finance Capital’s Responses to the Prospect of American Industrial
Decline

If We Build It, They Can Profit: How the Area Redevelopment
Administration Federalized Corporate Welfare, Alyssa Russell, Duke
University
A Nationalist Response to a Crisis of Power: The AFL-CIO and the
Burke-Hartke Act, 1971-1974, Melanie Sheehan, University of North
Carolina-Chapel Hill
Sort of a Renaissance Man: David Murdock’s Rusty Paternalism in
Kannapolis, N.C., 1982-Present, Will Raby, University of North
Carolina-Chapel Hill
Chair/Commentator: Erik Gellman, University of North Carolina-Chapel
Hill

Multispecies Workforces and the Limits of Solidarity

Reducing Chinese Laborers to Beasts of Burdens: Dehumanization and
Resistance in San Francisco during the
Great Epizootic Influenza Outbreak of 1873, Thomas G. Andrews,
University of Colorado Boulder
The Making of the Circus Celebrity and the Unmaking of the Circus
World, Andrea L. Ringer, Tennessee State University
Who Was a Worker?: Industrial Captivity, Industrial Childhood, and
the Politics of Manufacturing Illuminants, 1830-1865, Jeremy Zallen,
Lafayette College
Chair: Joshua Specht, University of Notre Dame
Commentator: Susan Nance, University of Guelph

On the Front Lines Against Fascism I: The Making of US Antifascism

Class War and Peace: Communism, Anti-Imperialism, and Antifascism in
the Interwar Period, Alexander M. Dunphy, University of Maryland,
College Park
Character of a New Type: Richard Wright’s Native Son and Popular
Front Aesthetics, John Bohn, Columbia University
Antifascism, Antisemitism, and the Young Communist League in Los
Angeles, Caroline Luce, University of California, Los Angeles
Chair/Commentator: Christopher Vials, University of
Connecticut-Storrs

If We Can’t Enforce Our Rights, Then No One Will: The Worker-driven
Social Responsibility Model’s History and Impact on Supply Chains

Cathy Albisa, Chair of the WSRN Coordinating Committee
Marita Canedo, Migrant Justice
Gerardo Reyes Chavez, Coalition of Immokalee Workers
Jennifer Lynn Bair, University of Virginia

Racial Capitalism and Labor History

Keona K. Ervin, University of Missouri
Elizabeth Esch, University of Kansas
Bernadette Pérez, University of California, Berkeley
Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, Georgetown University
Gabriel Winant, University of Chicago

Community Organizers and the Building of Worker Power

Naomi R. Williams, Rutgers University
Dennis Deslippe, Franklin & Marshall College
Louis Kimmel, New Labor
Jonathan Lange, Industrial Areas Foundation
Andrea Ortiz-Landin, Brighton Park Neighborhood Council
Mazahir Salih, Center for Worker Justice of Eastern Iowa
Deborah Scott, Georgia STAND-UP

Dignity and Labor: The Push for Fair Pay and Social Respect,
1919-1946

Before Essential Workers: Chicago’s Janitors, Sanitation, and the
SEIU, Benjamin Peterson, Alma College
The Same as a Man: Gender, Labor, and Equality in the Fort Worth
Armour & Co Plant, 1942-1946, Justin Jolly, Texas Christian
University
The American Standard: How the Fight Over Minimum Wage for Mexican
Women Helped Shape White Supremacy in the State, Leah LaGrone Ochoa,
Texas Christian University
Chair/Commentator: Kenyon Zimmer, University of Texas Arlington

On the Imperial Frontline: Radical Activism across Borders

Agrarian Radicals on the Edge of Empire in Texas, 1846-1917, Tom
Alter, Texas State University
Socialism and the Construction of a Global White Consciousness: Race
and Colonialism in the Second International (1889-1914), Lorenzo
Costaguta, University of Bristol
The Emergence of an Anarcho-Feminist Movement in the Mexican
Borderlands: Caritina Piña, Hermanos Rojos, and Germinal, 1915-1930,
Sonia Hernández, Texas A&M University
Chair/Commentator: Kyle Pruitt, University of Maryland

Thursday, May 27, 8-9:30 pm ET

Plenary

The New Labor Journalist and the First Draft of Working-Class History

Recent years has seen surging interest in workplace issues as more
workers engage in strikes and express interest in unions. The pandemic
has further heightened labor conflicts, as inequality of many sorts
soars, people debate the nature of essential work, and the gig economy
expands but also is challenged. What will historians of the future make
of it all? It’s often been said that journalism is the first draft of
history. Join some of today’s leading labor journalists–whose
proliferation itself is a sign of greater importance of labor

Michelle Chen, Dissent/Nation
Steven Greenhouse, formerly New York Times
Kim Kelly, Teen Vogue
Juliana Reyes, Philadelphia Inquirer
Micah Uetricht, Jacobin

Friday, May 28, 12 – 1:15 pm ET

Labor, Disability, and Imperialism in the U.S. Empire

Labor, Race, and Disability on the Panama Canal, Caroline Lieffers,
King’s University
The U.S. Imperial World of Labor and Disability, Jack Werner,
University of Maryland, College Park
Ability and the Management of Empire, Karen Miller, LaGuardia
Community College, CUNY
Chair Commentator: Colleen Woods, University of Maryland, College
Park

On the Front Lines Against Fascism II: Antifascism Across Borders

The Spanish Civil War and Anti-Fascism in the USSR: From the Great
Patriotic War to the Soviet Postwar, Glennys Young, University of
Washington
The Surprisingly Transnational Origins of Antifascism: A New
Proletarian Politics in Interwar Rome and New York City, Joseph
Fronczak, Princeton University
Aid the Victims of German Fascism! Transatlantic Networks and the
Rise of Anti-Nazism in the USA, 1933–1935, Kasper Braskén, Åbo
Akademi University
Chair/ Commentator: Julie Greene, University of Maryland, College
Park

Structuring Home-Based Labor: Professionalization, Organizing, and
Resistance Among Child Care and Domestic Workers

To Dignify Housework: Professionalizing Household Labor in the
Early-Twentieth Century United States, Cristina Groeger, Lake Forest
College
Importing Care: the History of the Au Pair Program, 1986 to the
present, Justine Modica, Stanford University
Organizing Low-Wage Women Workers: A Comparative Report from the
Field – Then and Now, Rosa Navarro, SUNY Albany
Chair/Commentator: Grace Chang, University of California Santa
Barbara

New Perspectives on U.S. Socialist History

Intellectual Radicals: How Ben Hanford and Carl Sandburg Shaped
American Socialism, S,tephanie M. Riley, University of South
Carolina
Fighting Fascists: Socialists and the Social History of Anti-Fascism
in the Early 1930s, Ian Gavigan, Rutgers, New Brunswick
After the Party: Socialist Milwaukee in the New Deal and World War
II, Aims McGuinness, University of California Santa Cruz
Chair/Commentator: Tobias Higbie, University of California Los
Angeles

Policing White Supremacy: Police Unions, City Politics, and Police
Brutality, a RoundTable Discussion

Aaron Bekemeyer, Harvard University
Michael J. Lansing, Augsburg University
Simon Balto, University of Iowa

Redesigning and Reimagining Superhero Narratives and Essential
Workers

Michele Bury, California State University, Dominguez Hills
Vivian Price, California State University, Dominguez Hills
Ellie Zenhari, California State University, Dominguez Hills
Chair/Commentator: Vivian Price

Towards a Collaborative Path Forward: Envisioning the Future of
Community Connections in the Responsive Curation, Promotion, and
Description of Labor-Related Collections (Co-sponsored by UALE)

Documenting the Intersectionality of the Black Lives Matter and
Labor Movements: Why We Can’t Wait, Ben Blake George Meany Labor
Archive, UMD
Corrective Collecting and Proactive Documentation, Outreach, and
Archival Description Strategies: A Collaborative Community-Centered
Model, Conor M. Casey, Labor Archives of Washington, Seattle
Speaking of Work: The Evolution of the Iowa Labor History Oral
Project and the Future of Labor Archives in the Midwest, John W.
McKerley, University of Iowa Labor Center
Building Shared Power and Solidarity: Community Programming as a
Strategy for Mutual Care, Support, and Growth, Shannon O’Neill,
Tamiment-Wagner Collections, NYU
The Present is Prologue: Building Archival Collections in the Now,
Catherine Powell, Labor Archives & Research Center, SFSU
Developing a Collaborative Relationship between the United Auto
Workers and its Archives, Gavin Strassel, Walter P. Reuther Library,
WSU

Friday, May 28, 1:45 – 3 pm ET

Finding Black Resistance in the Archives – Exploring Chicago’s Black
Labor andWorking-Class History

Erik Gellman, University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill
Melissa Ford, Slippery Rock University
William Adams, University of Kansas
Beverly Cook, Chicago Public Library
Chair/Commentator: Marcia Walker-McWilliams, Black Metropolis
Research Consortium

Farms, Factories, and Files: Centering Women in Modern U.S. Labor
History

Performing the Family Farm: Gender and Labor on Stage at Farm Aid,
Daniel Gilbert, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Pickin’ and Shuckin’: African American Women’s Work in the
Mississippi Gulf Coast Seafood Industry, Deanne Stephens, University
of Southern Mississippi
Discouraging the Office Wolf: The Delayed Campaign Priorities of the
Working Women’s Movement, Amanda Walter, Towson University
Chair/Commentator: Caroline Waldron, University of Dayton

Populism, Labor, and Social Movements

Thomas Alter, Texas State University
Omar H. Ali, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Rachel Meade, Boston University
Chair/Commentator: Robert D. Johnston, University of Illinois at
Chicago

The Right to Labor: Making Multiracial Solidarity from the Gilded Age
to the Great Depression

The Corporation’s Racial Body, Yuhe Faye Wang, Yale University
Slave Labor Must Die and Free Labor Shall Be its Executioner, Kyle
Pruitt, University of Maryland
Human Rights versus Property Rights, 1880-1940, John Enyeart,
Bucknell University
/Commentator: Rachel Ida Buff, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

More to the Stories: Communist Party Gains and Rightwing Violence in
the 1930s

Keeping the Peons in Line: Rightwing Rioting in 1939 San Antonio,
Gigi Peterson, State University of NY – Cortland
Keeping the Peons in Line: Rightwing Rioting in 1939 San Antonio,
Martin Halpern, Henderson State University (Emeritus)
Dead Red Reaction: The Klan Responds to the CPUSA Organizing the
South, Ben Schmack, University of Kansas
Popular Radicalism in the 1930s: The History of the Workers’
Unemployment Insurance Bill, Chris Wright, Hunter College
Chair/Commentator: Randi Storch, State University of NY – Cortland

Red, Blue, Purple: Deindustrialization and Working-Class Political
Realignment

Urgent Emergence: Post-NAFTA Working-Class Politics in Southern
Indiana, Joseph Varga, Indiana University Bloomington
Appalachia in the Neoliberal Era, Lou Martin, Chatham University
A “Sweatshop Employer”: The Embodied Politics of Workplace and
Community Campaigns Against
Deindustrialization in Western New York, Jason Kozlowski, West
Virginia University
Chair/Commentator: Sherry Lee Linkon, Georgetown University

A Decade of Documenting Agricultural Workers’ Struggles: The
Farmworker Association of Florida and the Samuel Proctor Oral History
Program at the University of Florida

Erin Conlin, Indiana University of Pennsylvania
Matt Simmons, University of Central Florida
Adolfho Romero, University of Florida
Chair: Paul Ortiz, University of Florida
Commentator:J. Antonio Tovar, Farm Workers Association of Florida

Chicago Health Care and Activism, Past and Present

The Struggle for Safe Schools and Communities, Stacy Davis Gates,
Chicago Teachers Union
Care and Protest during Covid-19, Elizabeth Lalasz, National Nurses
United
The History of the Trauma Center Campaign, Toussaint Losier,
University of Massachusetts-Amherst
Fifty Years in the Struggle for Health Care as a Human Right, Linda
Rae Murray, University of Illinois-Chicago
The Public Hospital and Chicago’s History of Health Care Activism,
Amy Zanoni, Southern Methodist University

Friday, May 28, 8-10 pm ET

Plenary

Screening of Adrian Prawica’s new documentary film,
Haymarket: The Bomb, the Anarchists, the Labor Struggle.

PDF Program

How do I join?

Opening Night Plenary

Plenary

Writing and Teaching a Labor History of Contingent Faculty (Joint Session with UALE)

LAWCHA/UALE Cultural Event: A Night of Poetry and Music

LAWCHA Board Meeting

UALE/LAWCHA Plenary: 9 to 5

LAWCHA Member Meeting

Plenary

Plenary