Please note the extended deadline of March 1st, 2008, for the this year's Midwest Labor and Working-Class History Colloquium:
Call for Papers
Midwest Labor and Working-Class History Colloquium, University of Illinois at Chicago, april 18-19, 2008
The organizing committee for the 2008 Midwest Labor and Working-Class History Colloquium is accepting paper proposals for this year s meeting.
We invite proposals on any topic related to labor and working-class history. Papers, which should be approximately 20-25 pages in length, will be pre-circulated via a conference website and discussed in a seminar format. Please submit a brief abstract, approximately 250 words in length, and CV to [mailto]mlwch2008@yahoo.com[/mailto] by March 1, 2008.
The Midwest Labor and Working Class History Colloquium (MLWCH) is an annual gathering of graduate students who seek to build a community of scholars. The colloquium provides a unique opportunity for graduate students to discuss current trends in the field, present their work in a relaxed and informal setting, and to meet graduate students from other universities with shared research interests.
The University of Illinois at Chicago will host this year s MLWCH on April 19, 2008. We invite participants to arrive on Friday, April 18th to attend the Newberry Library s Labor History Seminar. Professor Stephen Paul O Hara of Xavier University will be presenting a paper titled, "Working-Class Utopia: Work, Masculinity, and Vice in Post-war Gary, Indiana" from 3-5pm.
Theme: Gender and Labor and Working-Class History
Over fifteen years ago, Ava Baron called on historians to deghettoize gender within labor history. Whether it is uncovering the role of women workers in labor unions, redefining the meaning and location of work, or considering the role of masculinity alongside issues of class, historians have sought to bring gender into the analytical framework of labor history. Despite the many academic efforts to integrate an analysis of gender in to the field, the field (in scholarship as well as practice) remains disproportionately male. This year s MLWCH committee calls on labor historians to examine the role of gender in labor history. What does gender mean in a labor history context? How do the recent studies on masculinity fit into the deghettoization of labor history? Why are there so few women graduate students in the field? We look forward to discussing these questions and more in our opening plenary session.
John J. Rosen
Ph.D. Candidate
History Department
University of Illinois at Chicago
[mailto]jrosen2@uic.edu[/mailto]