Social and Labour History News

New edition
Workers of the World
Volume 1 – Number 13, August 2024

Download full articles - Free access

Once again war threatens the world, the future of the planet and condemns the working classes to poverty. Once again, working classes must push hard to stop Ukraine/Russia war, NATO’s warmongering and the genocide of the Palestinian people. In this edition, we take on the urgency of the answers still to be built, of the workers’ movement that needs strength and of finding convergences with the youth for the climate emergency, with anti-fascists who fight against growing authoritarianism, with anti-racism on all continents, with the defence of public services and radical gender equality.

From the past, we get examples in which the left and the workers’ movement have achieved significant victories against the war waged by the empires. This is the case of Marina Kabat’s text about the frustrated participation of the Argentine military in the Korean War in the 1950s. It is the example of the workers of the North of France and Belgium occupied by the troops of the Reich, of their struggle for better living conditions, and of the extraordinary resistance to the Nazi occupation, in a review of Steve Cushion and Merilyn Moss’ book, On Strike Against the Nazis. From the present-day, we publish a text by members of the workers’ committee of the Portuguese public television (RTP) where the field of labour struggles fully assumes the positioning on the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

We also publish an interview with Michael Roberts where the path and thought of the British economist are a fundamental reference or thinking the world in which we live and the crucial alternatives to ensure the future.

A text on two recently published books, and presented at the 6th Conference of IASSC, is Buntu Siwisa’s contribution to this edition of the Workers of the World journal: Labour Revolt in Britain, 1910 – 1914, by Ralph Darlington, and Recasting Workers’ Power: Work and Inequality in the Shadow of the Digital Age, by Edward Webster are the two books that Siwisa talks to us about, showing us the evolution of capital accumulation and the continuity of exploitation, and how labour resists in strategies of organization and mobilization. In fair tribute to Edward Webster, who passed away in March 2024, we republish a text by Karl von Holdt, originally published in The Conversation. Eddie Webster was present at the 6th IASSC Conference, last February, presenting his book.

Resisting, organizing, mobilizing is the enormous urgency of the present to which this issue of Workers of the World intends to contribute on the reflection and response capacity of class internationalism.

Articles

The Argentine workers' anti-war movement during the Korean War (1950-1951)
Marina Kabat

From Ukraine to Gaza, stop the war!
António Louçã, Paulo Mendes, Nelson Silva

Cushion, Steve and Moos, Merilyn. On Strike Against the Nazis Socialist History Society, 2021
João Carlos Louçã

"...A display of temper..."
Buntu Siwisa

Report of the 6th International Association Strikes and Social Conflicts Conference

Edward Webster: South African intellectual, teacher, activist, a man of great energy and integrity, and the life and soul of any party Creators
Karl von Holdt

Michael Roberts interview: Time is running out
Raquel Varela

Download full articles - Free access

Eighth Junior Scholars Conference in Jewish History

“The place of the Holocaust in German-Jewish history and memory”

Berlin, May 18 – 20, 2025

Eighth Junior Scholars Conference in Jewish History “The place of the Holocaust in German-Jewish history and memory”

Conveners: Co-organized by Anna-Carolin Augustin (German Historical Institute Washington DC), Mark Roseman (Indiana University Bloomington), and Miriam Rürup (Moses Mendelssohn Centre for European-Jewish Studies, Potsdam), and the Wissenschaftliche Arbeitsgemeinschaft des Leo Baeck Instituts with additional support from the Berlin Gateway, Indiana University

We invite proposals for papers to be presented at the Eighth Junior Scholars Conference in Jewish History to take place at the Berlin Gateway of Indiana University, May 2025. We seek proposals specifically from postdoctoral scholars, recent PhDs as well as those in the final stages of their dissertations.

The aim of the two-day workshop is to bring together a small transatlantic group of junior scholars to explore new research and questions in Jewish history. Via pre-circulated papers and brief presentations at the workshop itself, participants will offer insights in their respective individual research projects and at the same time engage in a broader discussion on sources, methodology, and theory in order to assess current and possible future trends in the modern history of Jews in Europe, the Americas, and beyond.

For some time, historians have sought to bring the history of German Jews out of the shadow of the Holocaust. Especially for the period before 1933, and particularly before 1914, scholars have been at pains to show that the history of German Jewry was not simply characterized by antisemitism, exclusion, and delusions of acceptance. And while the theme of studies on Jews in postwar Germany was for a long time a community “living with packed suitcases”, German reunification and the Jewish immigration waves of the 1990s have evoked new questions and themes to complement or supersede the concern with the aftershocks of the Holocaust.

So, what is the place now of National Socialism and the Holocaust in our current understanding of German Jewry? Does it remain the critical vanishing point for the history of German Jews before 1933? Questions that might be raised include:
- To what extent was pre-1933 German Jewish history destined for disaster? What kind of alternative histories and trends can be/ have been offered about the place and experience of Jewry in pre-Nazi German society?
- How far did Jewish responses to National Socialism and the Holocaust draw on Jewish practices and traditions that predated the catastrophe?
- How far is Jewish life in Germany, and are German Jewish diasporas elsewhere in the world, still shaped – in identity, aspirations, and memory by the experience of the Holocaust? How did the Nazi-Past influence the perception of Judaism/Jewish presence – e.g. the role of the Zentralrat der Juden in Postwar West-Germany, the preservation and or neglect of Jewish heritage sites in East and West Germany?
- How did this specific lens of looking at Jewish history through Holocaust history also shape and affect the historiography on Germany Jewry in the postwar period? How far did it determine what was visible in Jewish heritage and what remained invisible? And how did it influence public representations of Jewish history in Germany – in museums, memorials, or schools and teaching curricula?
- What role did Jewish perspectives and actors play in memorialization processes in the Post-Holocaust era? How distinctive is the relationship of Jewry in Germany, or of German-Jewish diasporas to the Holocaust compared with other elements of the postwar Jewish world?

We invite:
- historical research that raises questions about the place and significance of the Holocaust in the history of pre-1945 German Jewry broadly understood, and of Jewry in the postwar Germanies;
- historiographical research that explores the way in which history writing has juxtaposed (or not) the history of German Jewry, and the Holocaust;
- Memory studies tackling questions of trauma, commemoration, restitution, identity and more.

The workshop language will be English. The organizers will cover basic expenses for travel and accommodation.

Please submit short proposals (750 words max.) and a one-page CV by September 30, 2024 here: https://app.smartsheet.eu/b/form/7b393eb999b147ae9342ec1ca9a18391 . Successful applicants will be notified by October 15.

October 2025, Santiago de Chile

El Grupo Organizador del IV Congreso Internacional de Investigación sobre Anarquismo(s) extiende la convocatoria para participar de esta iniciativa a estudiantes, académicos/as e investigadores/as independientes, con o sin formación universitaria. El Congreso se llevará a cabo en Santiago de Chile, durante tres jornadas de la primera quincena de octubre de 2025. Las fechas específicas y el lugar del evento serán informados en la próxima circular. Para su desarrollo, contamos con el apoyo institucional del Departamento de Historia de la Universidad de Santiago de Chile (USACH).

Las anteriores reuniones –impulsadas por el Centro de Documentación e Investigación de la Cultura de Izquierdas de Argentina, en conjunto con el Instituto de Altos Estudios Sociales de la Universidad Nacional de San Martín (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2016), la Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación de la Universidad de la República (Montevideo, Uruguay, 2019) y la Biblioteca Terra Livre (São Paulo, Brasil, 2022)– han reunido decenas de expositores/as, junto a diversas actividades, tales como lanzamientos de libros, presentaciones de documentales, debates, exposiciones artísticas, talleres, conferencias, etc., lo que ha propiciado un crecimiento en cantidad y calidad de los estudios sobre anarquismos.

Como sus ediciones previas, esta nueva versión del Congreso propone un espacio de diálogo e intercambio de experiencias de investigación sobre el anarquismo y sus diversas manifestaciones y dimensiones (políticas, sociales, económicas, culturales), entre participantes de diversas latitudes, dentro y fuera del mundo académico y desde diversas áreas del conocimiento, como la historia, la geografía, la sociología, la filosofía, la educación, entre otras.

Esta iniciativa cuenta con el apoyo de numerosas personas del mundo académico internacional, quienes han comprometido su participación en diferentes tareas, tales como la difusión, la evaluación de resúmenes y el envío de textos y ponencias: Kevan Aguilar, Martín Albornoz, Dora Barrancos, Jorge Canales Urriola, Raymond Craib, Laura Fernández Cordero, José Julián Llaguno, Jordi Maíz, Manuel Lagos Mieres, Nadia Ledesma Prietto, Clara E. Lida, Gaya Makaran, Ivanna Margarucci, María Migueláñez Martínez, Eduardo Pillaca, Rodolfo Porrini, Ginés Puente Pérez, Angela Roberti, Susana Sueiro, Amparo Sánchez Cobos, Joshua Savala, Horacio Tarcus, Alejandro de la Torre, Felipe Corrêa.

El Grupo Organizador está compuesto por un colectivo diverso de personas que nos hemos autoconvocado desde distintos espacios de la investigación y docencia académica, la militancia y el esfuerzo editorial y propagandístico. Las personas, instituciones y organizaciones que conforman el Grupo Organizador son:

Centro de Documentación e Investigación de la Cultura de Izquierdas (CeDInCI)

• Archivo Histórico La Revuelta
• Grupo Anarquista Novena Ola
• Mar y Tierra Ediciones
• Editorial Talleres Sartaña
• Grupo de Estudios José Domingo Gómez Rojas
• ONG Observatorio CITé
• Núcleo de Estudios de Geografía Anarquista
• Proyecto Anarquista de Difusión Histórica La Brecha
• Ignacio Ayala Cordero
• Eduardo Godoy Sepúlveda
• Luciano Omar Oneto
• Francisco Peña Castillo
• Felipe Guerra Guajardo
• Felipe Mardones Fabio
• Francisco González Rocha
• Beatriz Medina Nebott
• René Cerda Inostroza
• Graciela Ortiz Montenegro

 

LÍNEAS TEMÁTICAS PARA ENVÍO DE RESÚMENES Y PONENCIAS

1. Anarquismo, anarcosindicalismo y movimiento obrero;
2. Biografías de anarquistas y trayectorias militantes;
3. Anarquismo transnacional: redes, circulaciones e intercambios;
4. Represión del anarquismo;
5. El anarquismo en los movimientos sociales;
6. Anarquismo, género y sexualidad;
7. Educación y pedagogía anarquista;
8. Prensa anarquista y cultura impresa;
9. Anarquismo, archivos y bibliotecas;
10. Anarquismo y perspectivas teóricas;
11. Pensamiento anarquista, decolonialidad y pueblos indígenas;
12. Artes y estéticas anarquistas;
13. Anarquismo y cuestión urbana;
14. Reflexiones historiográficas desde el anarquismo;
15. Actualidad del anarquismo.

 

CRONOGRAMA

Plazo para envío de resúmenes: 31 de agosto de 2024.

Aceptación de resúmenes: 30 de noviembre de 2024.

Envío de ponencias: 31 de marzo de 2025.

Fecha del IV Congreso: Primera quincena de octubre de 2025.

 

FORMATO DE RESÚMENES Y PONENCIAS

Los resúmenes serán enviados en dos páginas, formato Word o PDF. Fuente Arial, tamaño 12, interlineado 1,5 líneas. La primera página debe incluir nombre de autor/a/es/as, pertenencia institucional (si corresponde), correo electrónico y línea temática. El resumen debe ir en la segunda página y tendrá una extensión máxima de 500 palabras. En párrafo aparte, debe indicar cinco palabras o conceptos clave. Los resúmenes pueden ser enviados en idiomas español, portugués e inglés.

Una vez que su resumen sea aceptado, deberá enviar su ponencia en formato Word o PDF. Fuente Arial, tamaño 12, interlineado 1,5 líneas. La primera página debe incluir nombre de autor/a/es/as, pertenencia institucional (si corresponde), correo electrónico y línea temática. La extensión de la ponencia tendrá un mínimo de 6 páginas y un máximo de 10 páginas, incluyendo una lista con la bibliografía citada.

 

PARA CONSULTAS Y ENVÍO DE RESÚMENES Y PONENCIAS:

4congresoanarquismos@gmail.com

MÁS INFORMACIÓN

Página web: https://4congresoanarquismos.noblogs.org/

Facebook: @4congresoanarquismos

Instagram: @4congresoanarquismos

by Michele Di Donato (University of Pisa, Italy) and Mathieu Fulla (The Paris Institute of Political Studies, France)

This volume offers a new perspective on the political history of the socialist, communist and alternative political Lefts, focusing on the role of networks and transnational connections. Embedding the history of left-wing internationalism into a new political history approach, it accounts for global and transnational turns in the study of left-wing politics.

The essays in this collection study a range of examples of international engagement and transnational cooperation in which left-wing actors were involved, and explore how these interactions shaped the globalization of politics throughout the 20th century. In taking a multi-archival and methodological approach, this book challenges two conventional views - that the left gradually abandoned its original international to focus exclusively on the national framework, and that internationalism survived merely as a rhetorical device.

Instead, this collection highlights how different currents of the Left developed their own versions of internationalism in order to adapt to the transformation of politics in the interdependent 20th-century world. Demonstrating the importance of political convergence, alliance-formation, network construction and knowledge circulation within and between the socialist and communist movements, it shows that the influence of internationalism is central to understanding the foreign policy of various left-wing parties and movements.

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/leftist-internationalisms-9781350247918/

Coimbra/Portugal, 9-12 September 2025.

Recent years have seen a flourishing of studies which have added considerably to our knowledge of inequality dynamics in preindustrial times. Scholars focused also on the determinants of these dynamics and some of these suggests a direct connection between the growth of economic inequality and the functioning of the public finances (i.e. Alfani and Di Tulio in their book on the Republic of Venice). Basically, the argument is that regressive taxation would have fostered this phenomenon, but we still have little knowledge about the mechanisms beyond this process. Why did this happen? How did the public economy’s choices influence these dynamics? How did the management of the common pool resources and the level of municipal and state direct taxation affect the paths of wealth distribution? Which were the correlations and causations mechanisms between the different elements? 

We look for contributions for a session to be submitted for the European Rural History Organisation Conference that will be held in Coimbra (9-12 September 2025).

Argument

Recent years have seen a flourishing of studies which have added considerably to our knowledge of inequality dynamics in preindustrial times. Scholars focused also on the determinants of these dynamics and some of these suggests a direct connection between the growth of economic inequality and the functioning of the public finances (i.e. Alfani and Di Tulio in their book on the Republic of Venice). Basically, the argument is that regressive taxation would have fostered this phenomenon, but we still have little knowledge about the mechanisms beyond this process. Why did this happen? How did the public economy’s choices influence these dynamics? How did the management of the common pool resources and the level of municipal and state direct taxation affect the paths of wealth distribution? Which were the correlations and causations mechanisms between the different elements?

Clearly, a depletion or a private use of the common pool resources, thanks to its narrowed management, could have produced important effects in terms of increase of direct taxation and, therefore, of increase of economic inequality. However, the availability of the commons could have affected economic inequality not only impacting on the level of taxation, but also on the capacity of the taxpayers to face the State and municipal fiscal needs. Starting from these assumptions, the panel will focus on the complexity of the relationship between the management of the commons and the trend of economic inequality, dealing (but not exclusively) with the following topics in the long run (1500-1800):

• How did the depletion of the incomes from the commons could have caused the increase of direct taxation at the local level?
• Did a certain management of the common could have affected economic inequality in other ways – such as lowering the incomes (i.e., the fiscal capacity) for a part of the population and/or increasing them for another? In other words, how did the presence, or the absence, or a different way to manage these resources affected the capability of the rural population (or of a part of it) to meet the fiscal needs of the State?
• Did the direct use of the common pool resources or the renting out of them have different effects in terms of the redistribution of the wealth they produced among the rural population?
• More, did the presence of specific resources (public woods, buildings for the lodging of soldiers, and so on) produce, at the roots, the absence of the need to purchase/rent them and, therefore, to impose a tax to pay the purchase/rent?
• Was there an awareness of local/State institution of the connection between the presence (or a certain management) of the commons and the functioning of the fiscal system?

Organizers

• Giulio Ongaro – University of Milano-Bicocca
• Matteo Di Tullio – University of Pavia
• Benedetta Crivelli – University of Parma

Submission guidelines

If you wish to propose a contribution to the session, please send an email with a provisional title and a short abstract to the session organizers :

• giulio.ongaro@unimib.it 
• matteo.ditullio@unipv.it 
• benedettamaria.crivelli@unipr.it

before 20 September 2024.

As #ModernRadicals month comes to an end, Senate House Library archivist Clare George explains the system of ideas known as systematic ideology, developed by Harold Walsby and George Walford: https://www.london.ac.uk/news-events/blogs/radical-rethinkers-new-archi…

The records of systematic ideology make a fascinating addition to the Library’s archive collections of far left political groups. The archive is open to all interested researchers to access in the Library’s Special Collections Reading Room and the online catalogue is available here.

New York University Abu Dhabi in the week of April 21, 2025.

Organizers: Burak Sayim (NYUAD) and Masha Kirasirova (NYUAD)   

“Endgame of Empires” aims to explore from a global perspective the collapse of the Ottoman and Romanov empires and the reconfiguration of their imperial politics in new settings across the Middle East and Eurasia. Whereas national and nationalist histories framed this transition as a clean break from the imperial past in the inevitable rise of nation-states as “natural” units of modern international order, “Endgame of Empires” seeks to underline that post-imperial transitions were as messy as earlier imperial forms of statecraft and the legacies of multi-ethnic pre-war societies lingered and assumed new forms.

Were the tumultuous process of imperial collapse and post-imperial transition in the post-Ottoman Middle East, and Balkans or the fledgling Soviet republics in any way comparable, linked, or overlapping? How resilient were imperial frameworks, and how did institutional, economic, and social transformations work? Did post-imperial transitions change the lived experience of actors – from merchants to militants, from intellectuals to workers – and how did they react to their changing life worlds? Centering the collapse of these two major multi-ethnic land empires, “Endgame of Empires” will bring together scholars from all across the world to explore and consider new global connections and comparisons.

Building on ongoing scholarly discussions on post-imperial transitions and trans-imperial connections, this conference invites convergences between disparate academic debates. Vibrant scholarly debates have been taking place around empire-to-nation transitions in various area studies and sets of historiographies. For instance, Cyrus Schayegh argued that the first decade of new states in the Levant was a “long Ottoman twilight.” Hasan Kayalı emphasized the longevity of the empire and “incidental” aspects of new states in the post-Ottoman Middle East. Terry Martin’s now classic study reframed the emergence of national polities within the Soviet Union with the concept of “affirmative action empire.” Alfred Rieber has explored long-term historical, cultural, geographic, patterns of rule in Russian and Soviet foreign policy. By fostering discussion among scholars interested in connections and parallels of post-imperial transitions in the Middle East and Eurasia we aim to raise questions about the globally interconnected nature of imperial decline, nation-state formation and lingering legacies of imperial past.

Goals

The goal of “Endgame of Empires” is to offer a global history of imperial collapse and post-imperial transition. Imperial legacies and their repercussions remain a hot topic. Whereas the neo-Ottomanist ambitions rising from Turkey ensured that Ottoman heritage remained a vibrant topic of discussion in the last decade, the war in Ukraine has rekindled interest in the legacies of the Russian and Soviet empires and their significance. Exploring post-imperial transitions in these interrelated contexts allows us to appreciate the political work of the legacies of these empires today. 

Accordingly, we aim to foster a scholarly conversation with four main research questions:

a.          What were the legacies of the Russian and Ottoman empires in the immediate aftermath of imperial collapse?

b.         How did the transition transform the lives of workers, peasants, migrants, and revolutionaries?

c.          What were some of the long-term institutional legacies of empire across Soviet and post-Ottoman space?

d.         How was the transition from imperial to post-imperial statecraft reflected in the new sciences (environmental, physical, and social) that emerged in Soviet and post-Ottoman states?

 

The conference will take place at New York University Abu Dhabi in the week of April 21, 2025.

We encourage applications from PhD candidates and Early Career Scholars.

A limited amount of funding is available for travel and accommodation.

Conference papers will be the basis for a special issue of peer-reviewed articles.

To apply, please send a short abstract (300 words) and a short bio (one paragraph) to endgameofempires@gmail.com by September 30, 2024.

 

de Lisa Vogel

¿Qué significa que cuando hablamos de reproducir la vida bajo el capitalismo estamos hablando de la reproducción de la fuerza de trabajo? Cuarenta años después de su publicación, El marxismo y la opresión de las mujeres es un libro que llega «justo a tiempo» porque constituye una contribución esencial al desarrollo de una teoría integradora de la opresión de género bajo condiciones capitalistas. Lise Vogel rastrea con agudeza los textos clásicos en busca de «la cuestión de la mujer» en la tradición socialista para repensarlos críticamente a partir de las categorías centrales de El capital de Marx. Así, nos abre una nueva lectura sobre el género, la producción y la reproducción social de la vida material. Las innovaciones teóricas de Vogel abren una senda que, colocando el concepto de reproducción social en el centro, permite pensar el género, pero también el racismo, la sexualidad, segregación espacial, la migración forzada y el saqueo a los pueblos originarios como opresiones constituyentes de la formación histórica de la clase trabajadora. Una perspectiva que hilvana opresiones (y luchas), y sitúa a las mujeres en el corazón de las batallas y los movimientos que han ampliado y radicalizado los horizontes políticos de una nueva generación militante. Un libro imprescindible para afilar las herramientas necesarias para la revolución por construir.

https://www.bellaterra.coop/es/libros/el-marxismo-y-la-opresion-de-las-…

Berlin, 19-21 March 2025

We are now accepting applications for papers for our conference on resistance to persecution of the Jews. The conference is aimed at institutions and scholars from various countries who address the phenomenon of resistance to persecution of the Jews, both from the perspective of Jews who avoided persecution by fleeing to other countries or going underground, as well as from the perspective of those who helped them. The conference will take place from March 19 to 21, 2025, in the German Resistance Memorial Center.

Resistance to Persecution of the Jews as a European subject – Research, Remembrance, and Musealization

The Silent Heroes Memorial Center in the German Resistance Memorial Center Foundation commemorates Jews who resisted Nazi persecution and those who helped them. These helpers, often referred to as “silent heroes,” show that it was indeed possible to support those suffering persecution.

Throughout Europe there were Jews who sought ways to avoid being deported and murdered. This was generally only possible with the help of people willing to offer support. Taking great personal risk, the helpers procured food and forged identity documents, offered escape assistance, arranged lodgings or took in Jews. Going “underground” or into hiding and helping individual Jews in the face of the mass murder of European Jews was a form of resistance to the National Socialist dictatorship.

Not until the 1990s did a broad public begin taking a closer look at the “silent heroes.” However, there were already efforts much earlier to make their courageous actions known.

On the initiative of some surviving Jews, in 1963 the Israeli Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem started honoring non-Jewish helpers as Righteous Among the Nations. Up to January 2022, roughly 28,200 men and women had received this honor for their aid efforts.

In addition to various tributes, a musealization of the subject since the 1980s has also been observed. A number of Holocaust memorial sites and resistance museums in various countries now deal with resistance to the persecution of the Jews in their permanent exhibitions. Some exhibitions are dedicated explicitly to this subject, such as the Silent Heroes Memorial Center in Berlin.

Most scholarly research focusses on individual countries; similarly, most exhibitions generally also have a national perspective. This is only beginning to change. In recent years a Europeanization of the commemoration of rescue as a form of resistance can sometimes be observed in Europe’s museums. Comparable research from a European perspective is only beginning.

This conference aims to contribute to filling the research gaps and especially to stimulate comparative studies. Such research desiderata can already be identified in the previous conditions, as hardly any comparative studies exist, for example, on anti-Jewish measures in various countries. Especially with respect to resistance to the persecution of Jews, comparative perspectives are lacking up to now.

We look forward to receiving applications for papers addressing in particular the following aspects and issues:

- Papers focusing on the situation in various regions and countries, gladly also from a comparative perspective—e.g. trans-European escape routes and escape efforts, anti-Jewish measures and punishment for assisting Jews in various countries, case studies from regions previously having received little attention, denunciation and Jewish “snatchers” (Greifer) in various countries.

- Papers on networks, groups, acts of resistance, and subjects that have previously received little attention—e.g. public protests against anti-Jewish measures, armed resistance by Jews, gray areas of assistance such as the exploitation of Jews, forgery workshops in occupied Europe, the situation of children in hiding.

- Papers on the reception of the subject—e.g. postwar situation of Jews and helpers, efforts to honor helpers, musealization of the subject, nationalization vs. Europeanization of remembrance, heroization of helpers, instrumentalization of the subject for political purposes.

- Papers addressing resistance to the persecution of the Jews as a subject for educational work—e.g. special challenges and offers, best practice examples.

Other suggestions are certainly welcome.

Please send us a brief description of your planned talk (max. 3,000 characters) as well as a short curriculum vitae by November 15, 2024.

The conference will be held in-person. Conference languages are German and English.

Travel and accommodation expenses can be reimbursed for presenters.

Submission modalities:
Please submit the following in pdf format to Uta Fröhlich at: froehlich@gdw-berlin.de by November 15, 2024:
Abstract (max. 3,000 characters), curriculum vitae, and contact information

Kontakt

Uta Fröhlich, froehlich@gdw-berlin.de

https://www.gedenkstaette-stille-helden.de/

Berlin, 10-11 October 2024

In early autumn, the Centre Marc Bloch, in collaboration with the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg, the University of Lomé, the Humboldt-University of Berlin and the Association des Historiens et Archéologues du Togo (AHAT), is organizing a symposium for young researchers devoted exclusively to new interdisciplinary approaches to writing the history of German colonization in Africa.

Colonialism, Restitution and Memory – Reflecting German Colonialism from interdisciplinary approaches and perspectives

The meeting will present the various facets and paradigms structuring a new way of looking at the colonial process from a number of angles, including: the problem of restitution of looted objects, art history and colonial photography, the memorial question, colonial revisionism and, by extension, colonial medicine. The colloquium, which will take place from October 9 to 11, 2024, will be directed by Prof. Martin VOGTHERR of the Technical University of Berlin.

In the process of rewriting the colonial past, it was necessary, indeed legitimate, to rethink German colonialism with narratives that would bring to light this forgotten past, or one hidden in so-called “silent sources ”. This imperative raises a number of questions that deserve to be addressed during the colloquium, namely: How can we rethink and reorient the paradigms of writing the history of colonization? What new challenges need to be met at a time when the question of the memory of the German colonization model is resurfacing? What new approaches are needed to reinvent and revisit the “undiscovered” aspects of artistic and photographic sources? Beyond these questions, other related issues can be addressed in parallel, for example: how are certain colonial images and photographs silenced, and what messages do they reveal? How do museum works, images of colonization and the remnants of the latter - through their representational and investigative dimensions - faithfully express themselves? In photography related to colonization (Cf. K. Azamede), colonial “subjects” on the one hand, and the “atrocities” of colonization on the other, raise a postcolonial gaze even though colonialism dates back several decades. Moreover, colonization remains part of the collective memory (of the former colonized as well as the colonizers), and its legacy still awakens relationships with colonial literature, travel literature, museums and monuments.

In this post-colonial context, this symposium looks at methodological approaches, giving the floor to historians and art historians, cultural studies specialists, sociologists and literary scholars, since colonization and colonial expansion also played a major role, not only in the secretive and sometimes violent looting of cultural and cultic objects, but also in literary and filmic productions that draw particular attention to looting, looted art and collections.

Lastly, the reductive approach of “pure” historical narratives could be more broadly extended to sociologists, anthropologists and jurists (it's clear that an ethnologist's view of the colonial process is more or less different from that of an economist or political scientist, given the diversity of fields in which colonization was involved); this justifies the need for cross-views and interdisciplinary approaches in the human and social sciences. The emergence of recent approaches to writing the history of colonization is no longer in question, as is the resurgence of the debate on restitution and reparation, including revisionism and colonial memory.

In order to create a space for open and international dialogue between academics, researchers and students who are working on German colonization or who have already devoted studies to the issue (not only from a historical-cultural angle, but also from an artistic, socio-anthropological or literary one), the Marc Bloch Center - in its mission to encourage research and scientific discussion, interdisciplinary by virtue of its binational character - has decided to provide through this colloquium a space for exchange and discussion that will be open from the morning of October 10. The Colloquium will also feature a richly varied program of international and enriching panels, and will close with a presentation by a leading figure on the subject.

The scientific and international program is open to anyone interested in the issues that will be raised during the symposium. To register (online and in person), please send an e-mail to the following address, with the subject line: Forum Marc Bloch, memorygermancolonialism@gmail.com, by September 28, 2024 at the latest. A return e-mail will be sent to you with access data (zoom ID/password) for those taking part online, and registration information for the Centre Marc Bloch, a few days before the start of the event.

The Centre Marc Bloch and its entire organization and research team look forward to hearing from you, and ask you to circulate this announcement to your respective institutions and interested colleagues.

Programm

October 9, 2024: Georg Simmel Room (3rd floor)

Visit the Centre Marc Bloch and chat with its managers. Meet and greet.

October 10, 2024: Salle Germain Tillion (7th floor)

9 :30-10 :15: Presentation of participants and opening lecture (Key note)

Prof. Martin Vogtherr

10 :15-10 :30: Coffee break

10:30-12:45 First Panel (I): “Reconstitution of the colonial traces and cultural history of Colonial rule”

Chair: Dr. Hélisenne Lestringant/ Centre Marc Bloch

Moderator: Chandra FEUPEUSSI / Université Cote d'Azur

MBOG IBOCK, University of Douala

THE HISTORICAL MEMORY OF THE YAOUNDE GERMAN MILITARY CEMETERY (1884-1912)

Éric NDAYISABA, ENS Bujumbura

On the traces of the German past in Burundi: History and memory of colonial heritage

KOUZAN KOFFI, University of Lomé / Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

The Governors' Palace in Lomé: an emblem of German colonization in Schutzgebiet Togo (1898-1914)

Clarisse NZEUCHIEU, University of Dschang

Female facets in Kamerun: redefining the actors of colonial violence, 1884-1915

12:45-13:00: Pause

13:00-14:15: Second Panel (II): “Colonialism, revisionism, and the processing of narratives in the culture of remembrance”

President: Dr. Romain Tiquet / CNRS (France)/ Centre Marc Bloch (Berlin)

FOGANG TOYEM, Humboldt-University of Berlin

Disease control in colonial possessions under German colonial rule (1890-1916): From medical discourse to colonial medicalization

Leo KEUTNER, Gerda Henkel Foundation (Düsseldorf)

The liquor question against the background of Togo's pre-colonial history

Fidel AMOUSSOU MODERAN/Gabriel IIYAMBO, Ruhr University Bochum/ University of Namibia

A German Horror Story, 1904-1912: Remembering the deportation of Nama/Herero in Togo and Cameroon

Rose Angéline ABISSI, Université de Douala

LES FORMES PROTESTATAIRES ENDOGENES ET LES RESISTANCES AU TRAVAIL FORCE AU CAMEROUN SOUS ADMINISTRATION ALLEMANDE (1884 -1914)

KWAMI AGBEVE, Université de Lomé

La rigueur allemande dans l'imaginaire des Togolais : entre nostalgie et aliénation

14:15-15:00 Lunch break and end of the day

October 11, 2024: Salle Germain Tillion (7th floor)

9 :00-10 :30 Third panel (III): “Restitution, art history and colonial photography“

Chairperson: Dr. Julie SISSIA /Centre Marc Bloch

JIE-JIE, University of Bertoua

Spoliation of cultural property from former German colonies in Africa The difficult issue of restitution: the case of the Bamoum throne in the Berlin Museum

MBENG DANG, University of Douala

The problem of reappropriating works of art from the German colonial period in Kamerun: the example of the Berlin Museum

Barbara TRAUMANN, Filmuniversität Konrad-Wolf (Potsdam)

[Früher] Film und der Restitutions-Eklat von 1925

KOKOU AGBANYO, Technische Universität Berlin/ Université de Lomé.

Deutsche koloniale Bauten und Ehrenmäler in Kolonialafrika: Überlegungen über die Bedeutung des Kulturerben in der Postmoderne

10:30-11:00: Coffee break

11 :00 - 14 :00 Fourth panel (IV)” Colonial revisionism and postcolonial representations of the Memory process”.

Chair: Dr. Pepetual MFORBE CHIANGONG / Humboldt-University of Berlin

Pascal ONGOSSI, Friedrich-Schiller Universität Jena

That Africa! A postcolonial memory of the German era

Henry KAM KAH Henry/Lily METANGWE EBUNE, University of Buea

Debates in the Cameroonian Press about Restitution of Art Works to the Country

Ibrahima SENE, Universität Bayreuth

Voices from the African Diaspora and Petitions on the Colonial Legacy (2019-2023)

AQTIME EDJABOU, University of KARA

The centers of discursive dynamics of memories of German colonization in Togo

Anne D. PEITER, Université de la Réunion

Überlegungen zu erinnerungspolitischen Leerstellen bezüglich der deutschen Kolonialisierung Ruandas

14 :30-15 :30 “Final presentation and epilogue”: President of AHAT

Kontakt

memorygermancolonialism@gmail.com

13 to 14 February 2025 in Mumbai

The International Conference: “Refugees in Global Transit. Encounters, Knowledge, and Coping Strategies in a Disrupted World, 1930s-50s” will take place on the 13th and 14th of February 2025 in Mumbai, India. The conference is organized by Simone Lässig (German Historical Institute Washington), Sebastian Schwecke (Max Weber Forum for South Asian Studies, Delhi), and Swen Steinberg (Queen’s University, Kingston), in collaboration with Christoph K. Neumann (OI Istanbul), Maria Framke (Erfurt University), and Jens Hanssen (OI Beirut) and is also part of the foundation-wide event series “Ends of War – International Perspectives on World War II” of the Max Weber Foundation.

Refugees in Global Transit: Encounters, Knowledge, and Coping Strategies in a Disrupted World, 1930s–50s

Between the rise of fascism in Europe in the 1930s and decolonization after World War II, a range of non-Western, in many cases colonial, regions became hubs for people in transit. A growing body of new research on refugees “In Global Transit,” many of them Jews in flight from Nazi Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe, has highlighted this forced migration to and in the Global South. Scholars are documenting refugee encounters with local populations and colonial authorities, their search for more permanent new homes, as well as their attempts to maintain contact with, and facilitate the escape of, those left behind.

This conference builds on the emerging scholarship on cultural, social, and political encounters – connections and disconnects – among diverse groups of European and non-European refugees and with highly stratified host populations, including existing Jewish communities, colonial officials and settlers, and other migrants. While much of this research has relied on sources produced by state or colonial officials or the refugees themselves, this conference aims to explore new approaches and sources that require knowledge of local and national languages, archives, and histories.

“Transit” refers to individual and collective experiences of living in-between – that is, in spaces people did not envision remaining in permanently. However, it also refers to regions and countries like Turkey, Palestine, and India, where refugees from Nazi Europe found a safe haven while these regions were themselves undergoing turbulent transitions.

Examining this volatile historical moment raises further questions applicable to other refugee and migrant experiences in crisis: What kinds of knowledge transfer can we observe, and what kinds of boundaries and prejudices obstructed such transfers? What were the differential impacts of class, gender, and age on notions of ethnic, national, “racial,” and religious differences? And how can we uncover the long-term memories of this global diaspora of WWII refugees after most of them moved beyond their transit spaces in the decades following independence, state building, and – in some cases – new forms of forced migration?

Programm

Thursday, February 13, 2025

8:30 am – 9:00 am Registration / Coffee and pastries

9:00 - 9:30 am Welcome

9:30 -10:30 am Panel 1: Interactions and Illusions

Refugee Political Thought in Transit: The Interaction between Hindu Bengalis and Jewish Exiles in British Bengal, 1930s-40s
Arnab Dutta (University of Groningen)

End of Utopia: The Photographic Archive of a Disillusioned Refugee in Early Israel
Julia Hauser (University of Kassel)

10:30-11:00 am Coffee Break

11:00 am -12:00 pm Panel 2: Reimagination and Remembrance

Echoes Across Empires: Caribbean Refuge and the Reimagining of Holocaust Histories
Rosa de Jong (University of Amsterdam)

At Home in Transit: German-Jewish Refugees Remember Harbin, Manchuria, 1938-1949
Susanne Hillman (San Diego State University)

12:00 – 1:00 pm Lunch Break

1:00-2:30 pm Panel 3: Negotiating Precarity: German, Polish and Kazakh Refugees in colonial South Asia 1939-1950

Humanitarianism and the Limits of Sovereignty: Polish Refugees in Kolhapur
Pragya Kaul (University of Michigan)

Humanitarianism in Action: Kazakh refugees in Bhopal
Antara Datta (Royal Holloway, University of London)

Barbed-Wire Humanitarianism? : The Internment of German Civilians in Second World War India (1939-1946)
Suchintan Das (University of Oxford)

2:30 - 3:00 pm Coffee Break

3:00 – 4:00 pm Panel 4: Refugees, Hosts and Settlers: The Levant from 1939 to 195

’Nothing to do but speculate about the future:’ Jewish Refugees
in the Beirut Quarantine, 1939
Mohamad El Chamaa (American University of Beirut)

Civic Friendship, Hospitality and Repatriation in 1940s Palestine
Jens Hanssen (Orient Institut, Beirut)

4:00 -6:00 pm Break

6:00 - 8:00 pm Keynote: Atina Grossmann (Cooper Union, New York) followed by a small reception

Friday, February 14, 2025

9:00 - 10:30 am Panel 5: Shalom and Hello Bombay: German Refugees and Migrant Histories of Knowledge in an Indian Metropolis

Ernest Shaffer’s discovery of India: Navigating networks and accumulating expertise in the life of a refugee
Maria Framke (University of Erfurt)

German Camera for an Islamicate Vision: Josef Wirsching, Kamal Amrohi, and the Making of Visual Affect in Bombay Cinema
Razak Khan (University of Göttingen)

“These guys don’t know anything”. Ambivalences from a German aristocratic labour emigrant in Bombay
Jörg Zedler (University of Regensburg / LMU München)

10:30 – 11:00 am Coffee Break

11:00 am -12:00 pm Panel 6: Internationalism and Anticolonialism between the Local and the Global

“Global Transit” in a Colonized World: Internationalism in Colonial Bombay
Ninad Pandit (The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art)

Indian and Indonesian Anticolonialism in Transit: Wartime Colonial Subalterns in an Indian Ocean Anticolonial Moment, 1945-47
Naina Manjrekar (IIT Bombay)

12:00 -12:30 pm Final discussion

12:30 – 1:30 pm Lunch Break

1:30 – 5:00 pm Excursion

6:00 Conference Dinner

Event Website:
https://www.ghi-dc.org/events/event/date/refugees-in-global-transit-encounters-knowledge-and-coping-strategies-in-a-disrupted-world-1930s-50s

About In Global Transit:
Website: https://transit.hypotheses.org/
https://www.ghi-dc.org/research/history-of-migration/in-global-transit

https://www.ghi-dc.org/events/event/date/refugees-in-global-transit-encounters-knowledge-and-coping-strategies-in-a-disrupted-world-1930s-50s

On 7 and 8 April 2025, the University of Oxford will host a conference on the history of global economic governance.

Governing the Global Economy in the Long Twentieth Century

Since the financial crisis of 2007/08, international rivalries, nationalist movements, a global pandemic, and the existential threat of climate change have destabilised the global economic order. From an historical perspective, such strains have many precedents in the tumultuous twentieth century. We seek to bring together scholars for a two-day conference at the University of Oxford to explore the history of global economic governance. We are particularly keen to discuss how national governments, international organisations, businesses, financial institutions and workers all responded to shocks and instability, and how these responses shaped the global economic order.

Many recent historical works have explored the history of political economy, capitalism and global governance from multiple perspectives. There has been important historical research into the effects of wars and conflicts on the global economic order; the birth of global economic development initiatives; the ideological foundations of neoliberalism; and the hegemony of economic growth. Together, these works raise an array of important questions: What economic, political and social factors underpinned the evolution of national and global economic governance in the twentieth century? How have conflicts and crises generated competing ideas and agendas for governing the global economy? And to what extent can these works inform our perspective on present-day challenges of climate change, global poverty, public health, deindustrialization and global economic stability?

The focus of this conference will be on examining the ways in which the world economy has been contested, debated, governed and restructured during moments of crisis and change, as well as how challenging conditions determined relations between states, businesses, individuals and civil society. Our conference will aim to bridge past and present by offering fresh insights into the forces that have shaped our current global economy, and by considering possible future trajectories of the international economy.

Our conference welcomes a broad range of topics that are historical in perspective, including but not limited to those concerned with: global trade and monetary order; the economics of empire and decolonisation; international economic organisations and international economic relations; the governing of global food and commodities; global labour practices and markets; global banking and finance; multinational business enterprises; and international tax and regulation. Following the conference, we may solicit articles for the publication of a special issue.

Proposals should include a brief biographical note, presentation title and an abstract of no more than 300 words emailed to both Aled Davies (aled.davies@history.ox.ac.uk) and Robert Yee (robert.yee@history.ox.ac.uk) prior to the deadline listed below. If accepted, each presenter will be expected to share a pre-circulated memorandum of 2,000 to 3,000 words.

Important Dates
Abstract Submission Deadline: 1 November 2024
Notification by: 30 November 2024
Memorandum Submission Deadline: 1 March 2025
Conference: 7 and 8 April 2025

Conference Organisers: Prof Patricia Clavin, Dr Aled Davies and Dr Robert Yee

This conference is supported by the History & Political Economy Project, the Economic History Society, the Conference for European Studies at Temple University, the Rothermere American Institute, the Oxford Martin School ‘Changing Global Orders’ project, St. John’s College and Wadham College.

1 September to 28 December 2024

Haledon, New Jersey – The American Labor Museum/Botto House National Landmark proudly opens the exhibit Faces From An American Dream by Martin Desht on Sunday, September 1st, 2024.  The Annual Labor Day Parade steps-off at the Museum on September 1st, 2024 at 10:30am.

Faces From An American Dream features black-and-white photographs by Mr. Desht, who notes that “for much of the 20th century, Pennsylvania was the most heavily and diversely industrialized state in America.  Pittsburgh was famous for thirty miles of steel mills, Philadelphia billed itself the "workshop of the world," the Pennsylvania Railroad traversed half the country and the state's anthracite fueled the nation.” By the 1980’s,” Desht continues “both cities were examples of Rust Belt de-industrialization as America's economy shifted from industrial manufacturing to service and information. Faces From An American Dream depicts how this transition re-defined the American industrial city and what it meant for skilled and unskilled workers in search of the American dream.

In 1989, Martin Desht started photographing post-industrial Pennsylvania, a project that would occupy him for the next twenty-six years. Harvard University, Dartmouth College, New York University's Stern School of Business, United States Department of Labor, have exhibited his photography.  Mr. Desht works in black-and-white film and still operates a traditional photography darkroom.

Faces From An American Dream exhibit is on view at the Museum from September 1st through December 28th, 2024.  

This program is made possible in part by a grant administered by the Passaic County Cultural and Heritage Council from funds granted by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.

The Botto House National Landmark, headquarters of the American Labor Museum, is located at 83 Norwood Street in Haledon, NJ.  The Museum's hours of operation are Monday through Friday, 9AM-5PM.  Visitors are welcome Wednesday through Saturday from 1PM-4PM and at other times by appointment.  For further information about the Museum, call 973-595-7953 and visit www.american-labor-museum.org.

During the 1970s and 1980s, cultural practises of members of the working class as historical subjects became a topic of interest for West-German historiography. Research focussed mainly on two areas within the study of proletarian ways of life on the micro level of social life: “Arbeiterkultur” (“Workers’ culture”) in organised formats such as workers’ sports clubs or youth groups on the one hand and a history of how (working class) people experienced and perceived everyday life as well as (their) behaviour in and outside the factory that was not based on class consciousness but rather “Eigen-Sinn”. Similar questions were asked by GDR historians. The research focused primarily on phenomena from the time of the German Empire and the Weimar Republic, but also on ruptures and transformations as a result of National Socialist rule and after 1945. New methods and concepts were developed which remain present in historiography to this day, like “Alltagsgeschichte”, “Eigen-Sinn” and “Oral History”. The latter also highlights some historians’ political intention of creating a democratic “History from below” (“Geschichte von unten”) by giving voice to hitherto unheard contemporary witnesses. The same can be said about the formation of History Workshops (“Geschichtswerkstätten”) which enabled self-taught historians (often with roots in the New social movements) to contribute to the historical exploration of everyday cultures, especially on a local level. Thus, the first peak of a history of the “Workers’ culture” has itself become the topic of Contemporary history or History of knowledge (“Wissensgeschichte”).

Today, workers’ everyday culture, although not omnipresent, has its fixed place in historiography. This is also represented by “Arbeit – Bewegung – Geschichte”, where aspects of workers’ everyday culture are occasionally discussed but far less frequently than other topics. That at least some interest in the exploration of a cultural history of the proletariat still exists is best showcased by conferences like “Labour – Everyday Life – Exploitation: Social History of Working Women” (“Arbeit – Alltag – Ausbeutung: Gesellschaftsgeschichte der Arbeiterinnen”), which took place in Heidelberg just last year, while at the same time, a general loss of memory of research approaches and -findings from the 1980s has to be recognised.

With this intentionally wide kept Call for Papers, which covers as many research approaches, topics and perspectives without regional or periodical limitations, it is our aim to make the historiography of working peoples’ everyday culture more visible (again) and to provide an overview of the current research (situation). Connections to earlier studies are encouraged but also especially their extensions in different fields of study. These could include perspectives concerning new studies on workers’ culture and interconnections with aspects of transnational, local, regional or post- and de-colonial historical studies. An intersectional approach, for example the entanglement of Class with other categories of social oppression, can provide valuable findings and help broadening the understanding of this field of study. Furthermore, questions concerning fractures, ambivalences and (points of) reference/s could be formulated. For example: (Where) were similarities and contradictions in workers’ everyday culture and the notions thereof as propagated by parties, organisations or in countries with socialist rule? Were there references to Workers’ culture in the New Left? Which fractures and transformations/continuities can be found in workers’ cultures, for example after fascist rule, “since the Boom” or 1989/90.

Another approach could be the historization of the subjects who studies workers’ cultures, which would in turn enable a critical analysis and reception of their findings and conceptions and to (re-)discover early works either in a review format or articles.

Potential topics:

- The private is political: the negotiation of forms of relationship since the industrialisation

- Solidarity and class consciousness in everyday life

- Workers’ culture and consumption: diet, indulgence, addiction, clothing

- Negotiations and notions of childhood and adolescence

- Access to education: ways of learning and mediating knowledge

- Tenement/ “Rental barracks”, cooperatives and flat shares: living together enforced and voluntary

- Workers’ self-management, cooperatives for production and consumption

- Between emancipation and patriarchy: masculinity, femininity and other images of sex and gender in the proletarian everyday life

- From “Naturfreundejugend” (“Friends of Nature”) to Skinheads: the relationship between workers’ culture/s and sub-cultures

- Proletarian aesthetics: role, form and function in the productions and reception of workers’ literature, art and music

- “Oh, so comrades, come …?” (Inter-)nationalism and (anti-)colonialism in workers’ everyday life

- Grieving, remembering, and hoping: cultures of remembrance and visions of the future

- Competition versus winning mentality? Role, form and function of workers’ sports

- Feasts and celebrations: (ritualised) escapes from everyday life?

- Places of social encounter and political resistance: street, pub, shop, allotment

- Everyday forms of in- and exclusion: discrimination amongst workers

Meaningful research proposals of up to 2500 signs (including spaces) can be submitted until the 30th of September 2024 and should provide an overview of the topic, intended method and source base. We will ask for articles based on the proposals. The deadline for the fully written articles is the 31st of March 2025. All contributions have to pass our internal multi-step review procedure and it is only after the submission of the final version that we will offer a definitive promise of publication. We only publish original works (exemptions are sometimes made for articles initially published in a language other than German). Submissions for “Arbeit – Bewegung – Geschichte” are not reimbursed. Manuscripts may be sent per e-mail in a docx-file. Finalised articles in German may not exceed 50 000 signs including spaces and notes. Articles in English may not exceed 40 000 signs, for publication they will be translated into German.

 

Contact: cfp@arbeit-bewegung-geschichte.de
Deadline research proposals: 30th of September 2024
Deadline articles: 31st of March 2025
Publication expected in September 2025

Just in time for a new academic year, the American Social History Project at the CUNY Graduate Center is releasing a new, expanded, and updated edition of the popular
textbook Who Built America? Working People and the Nation’s History. A beta version is now available as a free, open-access digital resource featuring a comprehensive
social history textbook supplemented by thousands of primary sources drawn from our History Matters website and new teaching resources.

Designed for use in college-level classes and high school Advanced Placement and richly illustrated with hundreds of images, Who Built America? takes a social history
approach that is well suited for the US history survey and a range of classes, including labor and immigration history and African American, ethnic, and gender studies. We
encourage you to explore this new edition (currently in its final testing phase), consider adopting it for your classes, and return to the site frequently to see additional features
and content that will become available in the coming weeks.

To view the online resource, visit http://whobuiltamerica.org. For questions or further
information, contact the American Social History Project at cml@gc.cuny.edu.

Rome, 20-21 February 2024

Description

We are pleased to announce a call for papers for an upcoming conference titled "Left-Wing Women's Organizing and Activism in the Twentieth Century." This conference seeks to bring together scholars from different disciplines working on various aspects of the history of women’s activism and organizing. It aims to explore how women across the spectrum of left-wing politics shaped and influenced the twentieth century's political, social, and cultural landscapes. The conference aspires to assess the contribution of left-wing women’s activists to the general struggle for women’s emancipation using intersectional, postcolonial, and critical-feminist approaches, acknowledging the pluralities in forms and methods of organizing.

The twentieth century witnessed a surge of diverse forms of women’s activism and the proliferation of women’s organizations on both national and international levels. Consequently, women fought against multiple forms of oppression and for various, yet interconnected, causes across different contexts. Influenced by significant historical moments such as WWI, the fall of empires, the emergence of nation-states, and the success of the October Revolution, women relied on the frameworks of fast-developing left-wing politics to fight for different forms of emancipation. This same framework allowed them to organize within anticolonial and anti-imperial movements and to engage in black liberation struggles later in the century. In this way, they moved across the political spectrum of left-wing politics, which we hope to explore during this conference.

Despite the notable engagement of women activists across the globe, the historiography of twentieth-century left-wing politics has been notably androcentric, often neglecting the significant contributions women made. For decades, studies on left-wing women's activism in the twentieth century remained limited, often sidelined by Cold War historiography. Furthermore, dismissive attitudes towards left-wing women activists persisted, excluding them from the narratives on the waves of feminism and feminist practices. However, historians have begun to challenge this perspective, striving to illuminate the efforts of women activists within left-wing politics. This conference joins them in this endeavor, fostering discussions on the varied currents and practices of left-wing women’s activism.

We encourage prospective participants from various disciplines to submit paper proposals that will tackle twentieth-century left-wing women’s struggles, ideas, and activism through a broad perspective focusing on intersectionality rather than exclusively on gender. Moreover, we strive to go beyond the discussion of the “unhappy marriage of Marxism and feminism” or the "feminist-communist debate." We advocate exploring different forms and frameworks of women’s activism, collaboration, and/or antagonism. We propose exploring continuities and discontinuities within left-wing currents throughout the twentieth century. Lastly, we urge moving away from Western-centric perspectives, looking into the broader history of women's activism.

 

Themes and Topics

We invite paper proposals on a wide range of topics related to left-wing women's activism and organising in the twentieth century, including but not limited to:

Intersectionality and the Left-Wing Women's Activism 

• Left-Wing Women's Grassroots Organizing 

• Queer Left-Wing Movements and Activists 

• Political Participation and Leadership of Women in Left-Wing Movements

• Women's Roles and Experiences in the Socialist States and Left-wing Parties

• Left-Wing Women's Ideas and Writing

• Collaborations and/ or Antagonisms among Women Activists Across the Political Spectrum

• Addressing and Combating Sexism within and Outside Political Parties and Social Movements

• State and Societal Repression of Left-Wing Women’s Activism

• The Role of Women in Labor Movements and Trade Unions

• The Influence of Left-Wing Women on Social Policy and Legislation

 

Submission Guidelines

We welcome proposals for individual or co-authored papers, as well as panel proposals. To submit a proposal, please send the following information to LWWAOC@outlook.com  by November 1, 2024:

1. Title of the paper / Panel

2. Paper Abstract (300 words) 

3. Short biography (100-150 words), including affiliation and contact information for each presenter 

4. Statement on the need of financial assistance, if needed

  Important Dates

• Submission Deadline: November 1, 2024

• Notification of Acceptance: December 1, 2024

• Conference Dates: February 20-21, 2025

 

Funding 

We encourage researchers to seek funding through their respective institutions. We offer limited financial support to graduate students for travel and accomodation, especially those outside the EU.

  Paper Publication 

Selected papers from the conference will be considered for publication. Further details regarding the publication process, including submission guidelines and deadlines, will be announced in the near future. Stay tuned for updates on this exciting opportunity to contribute to the academic discourse on left-wing women's organizing and activism in the twentieth century.

 

https://sites.google.com/view/lwwaoc/call-for-papers?authuser=0

By Richard Temple

This book comprises tales of the Labour Party in the hundred years since the first Labour government. It includes many dramatic episodes, not least the seething anger of the Glasgow rent strikes during the Great War, the looming danger of Hitler in the 1930s, and walkouts over equal pay in the 1960s. The book conjures up lost worlds which have profoundly influenced modern Britain. Above all, this book describes the ways in which the Labour Party has impacted on the lives of ordinary people. How does Labour measure up after a century of government and opposition? The book is accessible and challenges established narratives. It is also original. No-one else, for example, has written so specifically about the Labour Party and Nazi rearmament or about the Wilson government's response to the Beeching cuts. The text draws on a wide variety of sources, including the testimony of public figures such as John Betjeman, Richard Hoggart, Friedrich Engels, and George Orwell. Researched with scholarly rigour, this book will appeal to a wide audience.

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 9781036407186
Number of pages: 307
Dimensions: 212 x 148 mm

 

https://www.waterstones.com/book/taken-as-red-highs-and-lows-of-the-lab…

7 and 8 April 2025, University of Oxford

Since the financial crisis of 2007/08, international rivalries, nationalist movements, a global pandemic, and the existential threat of climate change have destabilised the global economic order. From an historical perspective, such strains have many precedents in the tumultuous twentieth century. We seek to bring together scholars for a two-day conference at the University of Oxford to explore the history of global economic governance. We are particularly keen to discuss how national governments, international organisations, businesses, financial institutions and workers all responded to shocks and instability, and how these responses shaped the global economic order. 

Many recent historical works have explored the history of political economy, capitalism and global governance from multiple perspectives. There has been important historical research into the effects of wars and conflicts on the global economic order; the birth of global economic development initiatives; the ideological foundations of neoliberalism; and the hegemony of economic growth. Together, these works raise an array of important questions: What economic, political and social factors underpinned the evolution of national and global economic governance in the twentieth century? How have conflicts and crises generated competing ideas and agendas for governing the global economy? And to what extent can these works inform our perspective on present-day challenges of climate change, global poverty, public health, deindustrialization and global economic stability?

The focus of this conference will be on examining the ways in which the world economy has been contested, debated, governed and restructured during moments of crisis and change, as well as how challenging conditions determined relations between states, businesses, individuals and civil society. Our conference will aim to bridge past and present by offering fresh insights into the forces that have shaped our current global economy, and by considering possible future trajectories of the international economy. 

Our conference welcomes a broad range of topics that are historical in perspective, including but not limited to those concerned with: global trade and monetary order; the economics of empire and decolonisation; international economic organisations and international economic relations; the governing of global food and commodities; global labour practices and markets; global banking and finance; multinational business enterprises; and international tax and regulation. Following the conference, we may solicit articles for the publication of a special issue. 

Proposals should include a brief biographical note, presentation title and an abstract of no more than 300 words emailed to both Aled Davies (aled.davies@history.ox.ac.uk) and Robert Yee (robert.yee@history.ox.ac.uk) prior to the deadline listed below. If accepted, each presenter will be expected to share a pre-circulated memorandum of 2,000 to 3,000 words. 

Important Dates 

Abstract Submission Deadline: 1 November 2024 

Notification by: 30 November 2024 

Memorandum Submission Deadline: 1 March 2025 

Conference: 7 and 8 April 2025 

Conference Organisers: Prof Patricia Clavin, Dr Aled Davies and Dr Robert Yee

This conference is supported by the History & Political Economy Project, the Economic History Society, the Conference for European Studies at Columbia University, the Rothermere American Institute, the Oxford Martin School ‘Changing Global Orders’ project, St. John’s College and Wadham College.