WEEKLY READING SCHEDULE
August 26: Introduction
- Introductions
- Overview of Syllabus and Expectations
- Resources
- Discussion:
- What is capitalism?
- What is labor history?
- History and Historiography
September 2: Work and the Origins of American Capitalism*
Readings:
- Naomi R. Lamoreaux, “Rethinking the Transition to Capitalism in the Early American Northeast,” The Journal of American History, Vol. 90, No. 2 (September 2003), pp. 437-461.
- James Parisot, “The Two Hundred and Fifty Year Transition: How America Became Capitalist,” Journal of Historical Sociology, Vol. 30, No. 3 (September 2017).
- Jeanne Boydston, “Woman Who Wasn’t There: Women’s Market Labor and the Transition to Capitalism in the United States,” Journal of the Early Republic 16 (Summer 1996): 183-206.
GUEST: Sasha from SLU Writing Center.
PRIMARY SOURCES:
Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (Philadelphia, 1781), Query XIX
Alexander Hamilton, Report on Manufactures (1791), Chapter 4
September 9: Varieties of Non-slave Labor
Readings:
- Sean Wilentz, Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788-1850 (New York, 1984, 2004), Introduction and Chapters 1 and 2.
- Herbert Gutman, “Work, Culture and Society in Industrializing America,” The American Historical Review, Vol. 78, No. 3 (June 1973) 531-588.
- (optional/supplemental) Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, “Wheels, Looms, and the Gender Division of Labor in Eighteenth Century New England,” The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 55, No. 1 (January 1998), 3-28.
PRIMARY SOURCE:
Harriet Robinson, “The Lowell Mill Girls Go On Strike, 1836”
GUEST: Mason Brown (Librarian) at 7:15PM
IN-CLASS DOCUMENTARY: “Daughters of Free Men” (26 minutes)
September 16: Slavery and Freedom
Readings:
- W.E.B. DuBois, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880 (New York, 1935, 1962, 1992), Chapters 1-4.
- Thavolia Glymph, Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household (New York, 2008), Chapter 6.
- Barbara Fields, “Slavery, Race and Ideology in the United States of America,” New Left Review, 1/181 (May-June 1990).
- (optional/supplementary) Eric Foner, “The Meaning of Freedom in Age of Emancipation,” The Journal of American History 81, no. 2 (1994): 435–460.
PRIMARY SOURCE:
In-Class Documentary: “Doing As They Can: Slave Life in the American South” (28 Minutes)
September 23: The Work of Conquest and Development
Readings:
- Manu Karuka, Empire’s Tracks: Indigenous Nations, Chinese Workers, and the Transcontinental Railroad (Oakland, 2019), Chapters 3-7.
- Emma Teitelman, “Properties of Capitalism: Industrial Enclosures in the South and West After the American Civil War,” The Journal of American History (March 2020), pp. 879-900.
- Rudi Batzell, “Free Labour, Capitalism, and the Anti-Slavery Origins of Chinese Exclusion in California in the 1870s,” Past and Present, Vol. 255 (November 2014), pp. 143-186.
PRIMARY SOURCE:
Oral History: “Philip P. Choy,” Chinese Railroad workers in North America Project (Stanford University)
In Class Movie: 1877: The Grand Army of Starvation (30 minutes)
September 30: Populism and Radicalism
WRITING CENTER WORKSHOP: Reading and Note-taking. (Sasha)
Readings:
- Lawrence C. Goodwyn, “Populist Dreams and Negro Rights- East Texas as a Case Study.” The American Historical Review 76.5 (1971): 1435–1456.
- Charles Postel, “The American Populist and Anti-Populist Legacy,” in Transformations of Populism in Europe and the Americas: History and Recent Tendencies, John Abromeit, et al, eds. (Bloomsbury Academic, London, 2015).
- Leon Fink, “The Great Strikes Revisited,” in The Long Gilded Age: American Capitalism and the Lessons of a New World Order (Philadelphia, 2015), Chapter 2.
- (optional/supplemental) Melvyn Dubofsky, We Shall Be All: A History of the Industrial Workers of the World (Champaign, 2000 abridged version), Chapters 2, 4, 6-12.
PRIMARY SOURCE:
October 7: Freedom and Unfreedom in the Lean Years
Readings:
- Irving Bernstein, The Lean Years: A History of the American Worker, 1920-1933 (Chicago, 2010), Chapters 1-2.
- Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration (New York, 2010), pp. 8-15, 95-122.
- Neil Fligstein, “The Transformation of Southern Agriculture and the Migration of Blacks and Whites, 1930-1940,” The International Migration Review, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Summer 1983), 268-290.
PRIMARY SOURCES:
Robert M. La Follete, “The Danger Threatening Representative Government” (1897)
Herbert Hoover, Campaign Speech, Madison Square Garden, New York (October 22, 1928)
“Can I Scrub Your White Marble Steps?” A Black Migrant Recalls Life in Philadelphia
IN-CLASS DOCUMENTARY: “Up South: African-American Migration in the Era of the Great War” (30 Minutes)
October 14: NO CLASS—CLASSES FOLLOW MONDAY SCHEDULE
October 21: Making the New Deal
MIDTERM ESSAY DUE!
Readings:
- Lizabeth Cohen, “Workers Make a New Deal,” in David E. Hamilton, The New Deal (New York, 1999).
- Jennifer Klein, “The Politics of Economy Security- Employee Benefits and the Privatization of New Deal Liberalism,” Journal of Policy History
- Steve Fraser, “The Labor Question,’” in Steve Fraser and Gary Gerstle (eds.), The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930-1980 (Princeton, 1989), Chapter 3.
- Primary Source: Walter Linder, The Great Flint Sit-Down Strike Against GM, 1936-37, Solidarity Pamphlet No. 31 (40 pages)
PRIMARY SOURCES:
Franklin Roosevelt’s Re-Nomination Acceptance Speech (1936)
In-Class Short Video: Flint Sit Down Strike (1936-37) – UAW History
PRIMER (Not required but useful):
“The Great Depression” in The American Yawp, Ch. 23:
IN-CLASS VIDEO: Opening 19 minutes of Charlie Chaplin’s “Modern Times” (1936)
October 28: The New Deal Order
Readings:
- Kristoffer Smemo, Samir Sonti, and Gabriel Winant, “Conflict and Consensus: The Steel Strike of 1959 and the Anatomy of the New Deal Order,” Critical Historical Studies, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Spring 2017).
- Kim Phillips-Fein, “Business Conservatism on the Shop Floor- Anti-Union Campaigns in the 1950s,” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas, Vol. 2, No. 2, (2010).
- Joshua Freeman, “‘‘Common Requirements of Industrialization’: Cold War Mass Production,” in Behemoth: A history of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World (New York, 2018), Chapter 6.
- Ira Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White (New York, 2005), Chapter 3.
PRIMARY SOURCE:
Ronald Reagan, “A Time for Choosing” (1964)
“The American Standard of Living—How Can It Best Be Improved?” Radio Debate Between Senator Robert A. Taft and Walter P. Reuther, President, UAW-CIO
NOVEMBER 3: ELECTION DAY. VOTE.
November 4: Black Freedom
STUDENTS VOTE ON THEME FOR FINAL WEEK OF CLASS
Readings:
- Gavin Wright, Sharing the Prize: The Economics of the Civil Rights Revolution in the American South (Cambridge, 2013), Chapters 2, 4, 6-8.
- Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past,” The Journal of American History, Vol. 91, No. 4 (March 2005), pp. 1233-1263.
- David Leonhardt, “The Black-White Wage Gap Is as Big as It Was in 1950,” New York Times, June 25, 2020.
PRIMARY SOURCES:
Martin Luther King Jr., “All Labor Has Dignity” (Boston, 1963), Chapters 3-4, 6
AND
“A Freedom Budget for All Americans”
IN-CLASS DOCUMENTARY: Documentary: “At the River I Stand”
November 11: New Worlds of Work
Readings:
- Ana Minian, Undocumented Lives: The Untold Story of Mexican Migration (Cambridge, 2018), Introduction, Chapters 1-2, 8.
- Ruth Milkman, “Immigrant Organizing and the New Labor Movement in Los Angeles,” Critical Sociology, vol. 26 nos. 1/2, pp. 59-81
- Nancy MaCLean, “The Hidden History of Affirmative Action: Working Women’s Struggles in the 1970s,” Feminist Studies, Vol. 25, No. 1, 1999.
- Joseph A. McCartin, “Bringing the States Workers In: Time to Rectify an Imbalanced US Labor Historiography,” Labor History, Vol. 47, No. 1 (February 2006), 73-94.
In Class Movie: Loose Bolts (Documentary, 30 minutes)
PRIMARY SOURCE:
Studs Terkel, “Ruth Lindstrom, baby nurse” and “Rose Hoffman, public school teacher,” in Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day (New York, 1972), pp. 626-635.
November 18: The Fall of the New Deal Order
Readings:
- Jefferson Cowie and Nick Salvatore, “The Long Exception: Rethinking the Place of the New Deal in American History,” International Labor and Working-Class History, No. 74 (Fall 2008).
- Lane Windham, “Signing Up the Shipyard: Organizing Newport News and Reinterpreting the 1970s,” LABOR: Studies in Working-Class History, 10, No. 2 (Summer 2013): 31-53.
- Gabriel Winant, “Anomalies and Continuities: Positivism and Historicism on Inequality,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.
- Tim Barker, “Other People’s Blood,” N+1, No. 34 (Spring 2019).
GUEST SPEAKER: Tim Barker, Ph.D. Candidate in History, Harvard University
PRIMARY SOURCE:
Oral Histories: “Jim Hughes.” “Susan Casey,” “Karen Lewis,” in Harry Maurer, Not Working: An Oral History of the Unemployed (New York, 1979), from Chapters 2 and 5.
November 25: NO CLASS—CLASSES FOLLOW FRIDAY SCHEDULE
December 2: The Long Downturn
Readings:
- Judith Stein, “Conflict, Change, and Economic Policy in the Long 1970s,” in Aaron Brenner, Robert Brenner, Cal Winslow (eds.), Rebel Rank and File: Labor Militancy and Revolt from Below During the Long 1970s, Chapter 3.
- Aaron Benanav, “Precarity Rising,” Viewpoint Magazine, June 15, 2015:
- Sarah Jaffe, Michelle Chen, “Jaffe-Chen_Work in the Time of Coronavirus” Dissent, Vol. 67, No. 3 (Summer 2020): pp. 125-148.
PRIMARY SOURCE:
Philip Alston, “Statement on Visit to the USA,” United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, December 15, 2017.
December 9: Students Pick Theme (Tentative Theme: Class, The Democratic Party, and the Future of the Labor Movement)
- Brent Cebul, “Supply-Side Liberalism: Fiscal Crisis, Post-Industrial Policy, and the Rise of the New Democrats,” Modern American History, Vol. 2, No. 2 (July 2019): 139-164.
- Gabriel Winant, “Professional-Managerial Chasm,” N+1
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