Sanders or Warren? Populist-Progressivism or New Deal? Take Your Pick!
Political commentators regularly identify both Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren as populists. Labor historian Leon Fink dives into the debate over their roots.
posts from the year2019
OAH 2020 – Contingent Faculty Workshop, Reduced Registration Fee, and Travel Grants
Contingent faculty are encouraged to attend a workshop – “Non-Tenure Track Faculty on Teaching” – on April 2, 2020, 6-9pm, at the Organization of American Historians (OAH) conference in Washington, D.C. This workshop, sponsored by the OAH’s Committee on Part-Time, Adjunct and Contingent Faculty employment (CPACE), includes a keynote address by Herb Childress, author of The Adjunct Underclass (2019).
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Jeremy Zallen on his new book, American Lucifers
Our series of interviews with author of new books in labor and working-class history continues. This month, we speak to Jeremy Zallen, whose book American Lucifers: The Dark History of Artificial Light, 1750-1865 was published this week by the University of North Carolina Press.
Read more →“While There Is A Soul In Prison, I Am Not Free”: The History of Solidarity in Social and Economic Justice
In 1918, the American labor organizer and socialist leader Eugene Victor Debs was sentenced to ten years in prison for his anti-war activities opposing America’s involvement in World War One. In his closing defense, Debs said, “Your honor… I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”
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Remembering and Mapping the Knights of Labor
2019 marks the 150th anniversary of the Knights of Labor, the most important labor movement of the Gilded Age. It is worth thinking anew about that organization and not just because of that anniversary. We are now deep in the second Gilded Age and if we look back to that earlier age of plutocrats, it becomes clear that we are repeating more than a label.
Read more →The Past is Always Present: PCB-AHA Annual Meeting
The 2020 PCB-AHA conference encourages participants to think about and discuss how historical knowledge and interpretation—of the distant as well as immediate past—advances professional scholarship and simultaneously shapes public understanding of the world.
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Witness to Revolution: Film about Anna Louise Strong Still Gives Insight
One hundred years ago, revolutionary potential was exciting the sensibilities of radicals and counter-revolutionists across the country. In February 1919, the passions and potential of a workers movement was nowhere more powerfully demonstrated than in the Seattle General Strike. Anna Louise Strong was one of the prime chroniclers of the strike, and wrote one of the most memorable lines of the moment:
We are undertaking the most tremendous move ever made by LABOR in this country, a move which will lead
– NO ONE KNOWS WHERE!
Read more →LAWCHA 2019: Contingent Faculty, Independent Scholars, and LAWCHA
Tula Connell, chair of LAWCHA’s Independent Scholars Committee and Claire Goldstene, chair of the Contingent Faculty Committee organized a Saturday lunch plenary at the June 2019 LAWCHA meeting in Durham. The well-attended and highly participatory session offered an opportunity to make more visible the experiences of independent and contingent faculty scholars, to learn about work the committees have done around issues impacting independent and contingent faculty, and to continue the conversations about what LAWCHA can do and how we can protect all workers in higher education.
Read more →Herbert G. Gutman Prize for Outstanding Dissertation: Deadline December 2
The Labor and Working-Class History Association (LAWCHA) is pleased to announce its annual Herbert G. Gutman Prize for Outstanding Dissertation in U.S. Labor and Working-Class History, established in cooperation with the University of Illinois Press.
Read more →David Montgomery Award: Deadline October 1
The David Montgomery Award is given annually by the OAH with co-sponsorship by the Labor and Working-Class History Association (LAWCHA) for the best book on a topic in American labor and working-class history. Eligible works shall be written in English and deal with United States history in significant ways but may include comparative or transnational studies that fall within these guidelines.
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