Upcoming Events
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LAWCHA Pandemic Book Talk :Alice L Baumgartner, South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War
July 22 at 7 PM EST•via Zoom
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Alice L. Baumgartner tells the story of why Mexico abolished slavery and how its increasingly radical antislavery policies fueled the sectional crisis in the United States. Southerners hoped that annexing Texas and invading Mexico in the 1840s would stop runaways and secure slavery’s future. Instead, the seizure of Alta California and Nuevo México upset the delicate political balance between free and slave states. This is a revelatory and essential new perspective on antebellum America and the causes of the Civil War.
Register here!
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LABOR OnScreen :Inaugural Session
Thursday, July 29th, 7 – 9 p.m. ET•via ZoomIntroducing the LAWCHA Film Club! LABOR OnScreen Inaugural Session: Thursday, July 29th, 7 – 9 p.m. EST Register here!
- Spirited and Comradely Conversation Devoted to Essential Working Class Films Each Zoom session will consider two narrative (non-documentary) movies, linked by theme or genre; participants should view the films on their own beforehand (we’ll provide info about where they can be streamed)
- Come with a question related to one or both films, and dive into discussion about great labor-related movies!
- Open to Labor Historians and Educators, Union Members (and Supporters), Organizers and Activists, Movie Buffs, Students, and Anyone Passionate about Cinematic Explorations of Workers’ Lives
Past Events
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LABOR OnScreen :Inaugural Session
Thursday, July 29th, 7 – 9 p.m. ET•via ZoomIntroducing the LAWCHA Film Club! LABOR OnScreen Inaugural Session: Thursday, July 29th, 7 – 9 p.m. EST Register here!
- Spirited and Comradely Conversation Devoted to Essential Working Class Films Each Zoom session will consider two narrative (non-documentary) movies, linked by theme or genre; participants should view the films on their own beforehand (we’ll provide info about where they can be streamed)
- Come with a question related to one or both films, and dive into discussion about great labor-related movies!
- Open to Labor Historians and Educators, Union Members (and Supporters), Organizers and Activists, Movie Buffs, Students, and Anyone Passionate about Cinematic Explorations of Workers’ Lives
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LAWCHA Pandemic Book Talk :Alice L Baumgartner, South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War
July 22 at 7 PM EST•via Zoom
Read More
Alice L. Baumgartner tells the story of why Mexico abolished slavery and how its increasingly radical antislavery policies fueled the sectional crisis in the United States. Southerners hoped that annexing Texas and invading Mexico in the 1840s would stop runaways and secure slavery’s future. Instead, the seizure of Alta California and Nuevo México upset the delicate political balance between free and slave states. This is a revelatory and essential new perspective on antebellum America and the causes of the Civil War.
Register here!
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Workers on the Front Lines :LAWCHA 2021 Annual Conference
May 26-28, 2021•Chicago, IllinoisBecause of the uncertainty caused by the global pandemic, LAWCHA has decided to move the 2021 Workers on the Front Lines conference to a virtual format. We hope that those who submitted a proposal will still participate. We are asking all panel organizers to let us know by November 30 if you or anyone on your panel wishes to withdraw your proposal. If we do not hear from you, we will assume that your entire panel still wishes to be considered for inclusion on the program. More details about the conference format will be announced as soon as possible. Please contact [email protected]
Read Morewith any questions. Be it in pandemics, natural disasters, industrial “accidents,” or wars, workers always have been and remain on the front lines. -
LAWCHA Pandemic Book Talk :Deborah Willis, The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship
March 18, 2021 at 7PM EST•via Zoom
Register here to attend
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Gendering Labor History :A Conversation with Alice Kessler-Harris and Thavolia Glymph
February 25, 2021•via Zoom
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For thirty-five years, Alice Kessler-Harris worked to make gender central to
labor and working-class history through her role as an Editor of the Working
Class in American HIstory Series at the University of Illinois Press. She joined
founding editors David Brody and David Montgomery in 1985, shortly after
the third founding editor, Herbert Gutman, passed away.
In November 2020, Alice stepped down as an editor of the series, and we
welcomed Thavolia Glymph onto the board. Thavolia of course has done
critical work herself in bringing gender and race into the heart of our field. At
this historic moment of transition. LAWCHA is pleased to host a conversation
with Alice and Thavolia about gender and labor history.
The conversation will be moderated by Tera Hunter, another crucial player in gendering labor history.
We invite all LAWCHA members and friends to join us for a stimulating conversation!
Please register here. -
LAWCHA Pandemic Book Talk :Toni Gilpin, The Long Deep Grudge A Story of Big Capital, Radical Labor, and Class War in the American Heartland
February 18, 2021•via Zoom
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LAWCHA’s Pandemic Book Talks feature talks by LAWCHA members whose books launched in the midst of (or just before) the pandemic. Book talks feature a presentation and a discussion.
View the February 18th talk with Toni Gilpin on The Long Deep Grudge A Story of Big Capital, Radical Labor, and Class War in the American Heartland.
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LAWCHA Pandemic Book Talk :Alexandra Finley, An Intimate Economy: Enslaved Women, Work, and America’s Domestic Slave Trade
January 21, 7pm (EST)•via Zoom
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LAWCHA’s Pandemic Book Talks feature talks by LAWCHA members whose books launched in the midst of (or just before) the pandemic. Book talks feature a presentation and a discussion. Join us on January 21, 2021 for Alexandra Finley, An Intimate Economy: Enslaved Women, Work, and America’s Domestic Slave Trade.
Through the personal histories of four enslaved women, Finley explores the intangible costs of the slave market, moving beyond ledgers, bills of sales, and statements of profit and loss to consider the often incalculable but nevertheless invaluable place of women’s emotional, sexual, and domestic labor in the economy. The details of these women’s lives reveal the complex intersections of economy, race, and family at the heart of antebellum society.
View the book talk with Alexandra Finley here. -
LAWCHA Pandemic Book Talk :Jarod Roll, Poor Man’s Fortune: White Working-Class Conservatism in American Metal Mining, 1850–1950
December 17, 2020•via Zoom
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LAWCHA’s Pandemic Book Talks feature talks by LAWCHA members whose books launched in the midst of (or just before) the pandemic. Book talks feature a presentation and a discussion. Join us December 17 for Jarod Roll’s, Poor Man’s Fortune: White Working-Class Conservatism in American Metal Mining, 1850–1950 (University of North Carolina Press, 2020).
With painstaking research, Roll shows how the miners’ choices reflected a deep-seated, durable belief that hard-working American white men could prosper under capitalism, and exposes the grim costs of this view for these men and their communities, for organized labor, and for political movements seeking a more just and secure society. Roll’s story shows how American inequalities are in part the result of a white working-class conservative tradition driven by grassroots assertions of racial, gendered, and national privilege.
Please join us at 7pm (EST) on Thursday, December 17, 2020.
Please register here in advance and join us via Zoom. (link) -
LAWCHA Pandemic Book Talk :Robert Chase, We Are Not Slaves: State Violence, Coerced Labor, and Prisoners Rights in Postwar America
November 19, 2020•via Zoom
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LAWCHA’s Pandemic Book Talks feature talks by LAWCHA members whose books launched in the midst of (or just before) the pandemic. Book talks will feature a presentation and discussion. Join us November 19 for Robert Chase, We Are Not Slaves: State Violence, Coerced Labor, and Prisoners Rights in Postwar America (University of North Carolina Press, 2020).
At 7pm on November 19 Robert Chase, Associate Professor of History at Stony Brook University, will give a 30-minute talk on Zoom about his new book, We Are Not Slaves: State Violence, Coerced Labor, and Prisoners’ Rights in Postwar America, followed by Q&A.
Drawing from three decades of legal documents compiled by prisoners, Chase narrates the struggle to change prison from within. Told from the vantage point of the prisoners themselves, “We Are Not Slaves,” weaves together untold but devastatingly important truths from the histories of labor, civil rights, and politics in the United States as it narrates the transition from prison plantations of the past to the mass incarceration of today.
Please register in advance and join us via zoom (link).
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LAWCHA Pandemic Book Talk :Touré Reed, Toward Freedom: The Case Against Race Reductionism
October 15, 2020•via Zoom
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October 15, 2020
LAWCHA’s Pandemic Book Talks feature talks by LAWCHA members whose books launched in the midst of (or just before) the pandemic.
Join us for Touré F. Reed, Professor of History at Illinois State University
Toward Freedom: The Case Against Race Reductionism (Verso, 2020)
View the book talk here.
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LAWCHA Pandemic Book Talk :Marjoleine Kars, Blood on the River: A Chronicle of Mutiny and Freedom on the Wild Coast
September 17, 2020•via Zoom
Read MoreLAWCHA’s Pandemic Book Talks feature talks by LAWCHA members whose books launched in the midst of (or just before) the pandemic. Book talks will feature a presentation and discussion. Join us September 17 for Marjoleine Kars, Blood on the River: A Chronicle of Mutiny and Freedom on the Wild Coast (The New Press, 2020).
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The Challenges & Opportunities Ahead for Southern Workers :A Virtual Plenary Event hosted by The Southern Labor Studies Association
September 11, 2020 @ 4PM•via ZoomHosted by: Nancy MacLean William H. Chafe Distinguished Professor of History and Public Policy, Duke University Main Speakers: Marybe McMillian President of North Carolina State AFL-CIO Bill Fletcher Author, Activist, and Former Head of TransAfrica Forum
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LAWCHA Pandemic Book Talk :Michael Goldfield, The Southern Key: Class, Race, and Radicalism in the 1930s and 1940s
August 20•via Zoom
Read MoreLAWCHA’s Pandemic Book Talks feature talks by LAWCHA members whose books launched in the midst of (or just before) the pandemic. Book talks will feature a presentation and discussion. Join us August 20 for Michael Goldfield, The Southern Key: Class, Race, and Radicalism in the 1930s and 1940s (Oxford University Press, 2020).
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LAWCHA Pandemic Book Talk :Verónica Martínez-Matsuda, Migrant Citizenship: Race, Rights, and Reform in the Farm Labor Camp Program
July 16, 2020•via Zoom
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LAWCHA’s Pandemic Book Talks feature talks by LAWCHA members whose books launched in the midst of (or just before) the pandemic. Book talks will feature a presentation and discussion.
On July 16, Verónica Martínez-Matsuda presented Migrant Citizenship: Race, Rights, and Reform in the Farm Labor Camp Program (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020). To view a recording of the event, click here. -
American Unemployment :Past, Present, and Future by Frank Stricker
June 18, 2020•via ZoomRead MoreThe Labor and Working Class History Association’s Pandemic Book Talks Presents: American Unemployment: Past, Present, and Future by Frank StrickerProfessor Emeritus of History, Interdisciplinary Studies, and Labor Studies at California State University, Dominguez HillsJun 18, 2020 7 PM EST Please join us via Zoom and register in advance for this meeting (link) -
2020 LAWCHA Presidential Address by Julie Greene
April 3, 2020•via Zoom“Rethinking the Boundaries of Class: Lessons from Transnational Labor History and the Neoliberal University,” with responses from Joe William Trotter, Lara Putnam and Trevor Griffey
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Continuing the Struggle :The International Labor Organization (ILO) Centenary and the Future of Global Worker Rights
November 21-22, 2019•Washington, DCNew Submission Deadline: February 1, 2019 This conference will mark the centenary of that watershed event. It will be both retrospective and prospective.
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“While There Is A Soul In Prison, I Am Not Free” :The History of Solidarity in Social and Economic Justice
November 13-14, 2020•Indiana State UniversitySponsored by the Eugene V. Debs Foundation, the Cunningham Memorial Library, and the Department of History at Indiana State University
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Workers on the Move, Workers’ Movements :LAWCHA 2019 Conference
May 30-June 1, 2019•Duke University, Durham, NCThe Labor and Working-‐Class History Association, an organization of scholars, teachers, students, labor educators and activists, welcomes proposals for the 2019 LAWCHA conference at Duke University in Durham, NC, May 30-June 1. The conference theme will be Workers on the Move, Workers’ Movements.
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Long-term global perspectives on preventing sexual harassment in the workplace :Policy and practice
March 8-10, 2020•The Museum of Work, Norrköping,SwedenThis interdisciplinary conference aims to assemble knowledge about ways of preventing and tackling sexual harassment. We also invite activists, labor organizations, policy makers and other stakeholders to take part in the conference.
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Take the Pledge :February 16 National Stayaway Day
February 16, 2019•EverywhereThis resistance will involve protests at airports and other federal facilities and a call to federal workers to stay away from work. The concept of a “stayaway” is borrowed from the anti-apartheid movement South Africa, which used this form of protest effectively.
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Forty Years of the Working Class in American History Series :Looking Forward and Back
Saturday, October 27, 11am•The Newberry, Chicago, IllinoisIncludes labor historians, Leon Fink, editor of Labor: Studies in Working Class History, former LAWCHA board members, LAWCHA president Julie Greene, Gutman Prize winner Jessica Wilkerson, and many others.
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