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  • Wednesday, February 15, 2023 4:37 PM | Max Krochmal (Administrator)

    We are thrilled to announce the premiere of SLSA's newly revamped podcast, Working History, now co-produced by David Anderson, Louisiana Tech University, and Olivia Paschal, University of Virginia. The first new episode since the pandemic, "Labor Journalism, Farmworkers, and Reynolds Tobacco with Victoria Bouloubasis," is now live on SoundCloud. Check it out and subscribe now! And stay tuned for new episodes each month!

    SLSA also thanks Beth English, Princeton University, for originally creating the podcast and producing it from 2015 to 2020. Thanks so much to Beth for her vision and leadership! And thanks to Dave and Olivia and former SLSA president Bryant Simon for bringing Working History back!

    Podcast episodes link directly to SoundCloud and are also available on the New Books NetworkSpotify and iTunesDo you have thoughts on who we should feature? Let us know here.

  • Monday, September 05, 2022 7:04 AM | Bryant Simon (Administrator)


    See the article here.   It involves charges of kidnapping, anti unionism, and on-going solidarity.  

  • Wednesday, August 31, 2022 10:32 PM | Bryant Simon (Administrator)


    Get ready for the SLSA meeting next week by watching this 4-minute video from the 12th biannual Statewide convention at the beautiful Franklinton Center in Whitakers, North Carolina. As UE President Sekia Royall writes, "This historical space was the perfect place to celebrate our 25 years of organizing and building workers power here in the south. We had an opportunity to hear from our workers and the struggles that they're facing and also to hear from some of our great speakers about the struggle. We had an opportunity to formulate some great plans for the future of UE Local 150 and we look forward to the fight ahead. Here's a short clip of the convention I hope you enjoy. "

  • Wednesday, August 31, 2022 10:28 PM | Bryant Simon (Administrator)


    Check out Matt's new book.  And it isn't about the Knight of Labor.  It is about Andy Gibbs and The Bee Gees!  Also check out the mention of the book in PEOPLE!

  • Tuesday, July 27, 2021 1:28 PM | Bryant Simon (Administrator)



    From UGA News:

    Cindy Hahamovitch, B. Phinizy Spalding Distinguished Professor of Southern History in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, has been awarded a 2021 Fellowship by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Hahamovitch is one of 184 artists, writers, scholars and scientistschosen through a rigorous peer-review process from almost 3,000 applicants.

    Guggenheim Fellowships are intended for individuals who have already demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts.

    A scholar of Southern, immigration and labor history in a global context, Hahamovitch is the author of two books: “The Fruits of Their Labor: Atlantic Coast Farmworkers and the Making of Migrant Poverty, 1870-1945” (UNC Press, 1997) and “No Man’s Land: Jamaican Guestworkers in America and the Global History of Deportable Labor” (Princeton University Press). A former Fulbright Fellow and the John E. Sawyer Fellow at the National Humanities Center, she is the past president of the Southern Labor Studies Association and the reviews editor for LABOR: Studies in Working-Class History.

    Hahamovitch’s Fellowship project will build on her existing scholarship to explore the guest worker programs and human trafficking in a global context. While her first book tells the story of farmers’ use of migrant workers in the U.S. through the second world war, her second book picks up with guest worker program, especially the use of deportation as a labor discipline tool, in the post-war period.

    The new project will be a book that seeks to compare guest worker programs around the world: “That Same Old Snake: Slaves, Coolies, Guestworkers, and the Global History of Human Trafficking.”

    “There is significant literature on indentured servitude and migration in the 19th century, and a growing amount of scholarship on guest workers, modern labor migrants who work on temporary contracts,” Hahamovitch said. “What strikes me is how similar they are. Both are ostensibly free labor systems, but both are designed to mobilize and then immobilize labor. They’ve done so on a massive global scale.”

    The new book takes as its focus the Signal International case as the nexus for telling a more global story. Worker recruitment connected with the Signal shipyards in Mississippi and Texas that resulted in hundreds of Indian men indebted, stranded and threatened with deportation. Hahamovitch will use the story to connect multiple strands at the same time, including firsthand reporting from interviews planned with former guest workers and their families, to present a picture of state complicity in the trafficking dynamic worldwide.

    “This is a global phenomenon, not just an American one. And it’s not just a story of individual evildoers,” she said. “Governments admit guest workers in ways that make them extremely vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. These state-sanctioned migration programs give employers extraordinary power over workers. When that extraordinary power seems ordinary, when employers can violate people’s contracts – pay low wages, demand long hours and provide poor housing – without consequences, much more extreme forms of criminal behavior inevitably follow. So, the extreme is born out of the ordinary.”

    “Dr. Hahamovitch is a leading scholar of the history of labor, and although her colleagues in the department of history will miss her energy while she is on leave, we are very much looking forward to her book about how guest workers have historically occupied a vulnerable conjunction between international labor markets and the state’s coercive power,” said Jamie Kriener, professor and head of the department of history.

  • Tuesday, July 27, 2021 1:22 PM | Bryant Simon (Administrator)

    From University of London Press Release:


    We are thrilled to announce that our colleague Dr Josh Hollands, Lecturer (Teaching) in United States History, has received a Fulbright Scholar Award that will see him undertake research and lecture at Elon University in North Carolina on one of the most well-regarded and impactful scholarship programmes in the world. At Elon, a university committed to engaged and experimental pedagogies, Josh will be teaching classes in US and LGBTQ history.

    Josh has been selected to undertake research that examines the role of the workplace in the rapid expansion of LGBTQ rights over the past two decades. The majority of LGBTQ people had no federal protection against discrimination in employment until the US Supreme Court ruled sexual orientation and gender identity are protected characteristics under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (1964) in June 2020.

    The Fulbright Award will also allow Josh to develop his next project, a history of the Cracker Barrel restaurant chain. The project seeks to re-examine and re-orientate the service sector workplace as a central space in which human and civil rights are negotiated and contested.

    Commenting on receiving the award, Josh said: “This generous award will allow me to complete my first monograph and undertake substantial archival and oral history research for my next project. I am excited and immensely thankful to the Fulbright Commission for this exceptional opportunity. I am also particularly looking forward to working with Elon undergraduates and to hearing their unique perspectives on U.S. and LGBTQ history. Elon is renowned for its teaching provision and global engagement, and I hope to learn from as well as contribute to this environment while on campus.”

    Maria Balinska, Executive Director, US-UK Fulbright Commission said: 

    “Our vision is a world where there are no obstacles to learning, understanding and collaboration. Today there are many global challenges to overcome, and the world needs compassionate leaders to tackle them. This cohort of awardees will be placing cultural engagement at the heart of their experiences as they undertake ambitious study and research programmes in the US: I am filled with hope for the wonderful collaborations that will ensue.” 

    Josh Hollands completed his doctorate at UCL’s Institute of the Americas in 2019, where he is now a Lecturer (Teaching) in US history. Prior to his doctorate, Josh completed an MA in US history and politics at UCL and received a BA in American Studies from the University of Hull. Earlier this year Josh was awarded the Herbert G. Gutman Prize for Outstanding Dissertation in U.S. Labor and Working Class History by the Labor and Working Class History Association (LAWCHA). He is currently revising his dissertation for publication by the University of Illinois Press.


  • Tuesday, January 12, 2021 3:52 PM | Anonymous

    The SLSA plans to host 3-5 Zoom one-on-one workshops built around works-in-progress by authors at the first book, article, or dissertation stages.

    To participate, scholars will need to submit a proposal to share an article, or a chapter of their dissertation or first book (between 20-30 pages.) Proposals will be reviewed by a committee of SLSA officers. Upon acceptance, the SLSA workshop committee will work with the scholar to find a designated commentator, someone in the field with knowledge of the subject. The scholar will pre-circulate that paper to the commentator. Then, they will arrange a 60-minute one-on-one session devoted entirely to this work-in-progress. The goal is to provide emerging scholars with an opportunity to get detailed, informed, and constructive feedback on their writing and the arguments they are making and to produce the kind of collective thinking that stimulates new thoughts and ideas. With that in mind, the SLSA encourages submissions from scholars in a wide range of fields on any aspect of the working-class experience in the South, broadly defined.

    The participants will be chosen in early March, the paper will circulate in late May, early June, and the sessions will be held in the middle of June. We also hope to have a Zoom meeting with all participants after the session, so that everyone can meet each other and further discuss their work and the larger field of Southern Labor Studies.

    ***To signal the SLSA’s commitment to new work in the field, we will offer each workshop participant $100.***

    TO APPLY:

    To submit a proposal, please prepare a short bio (100 words) and abstract (200 words), and fill out this form.

    DEADLINE for submissions, February, 15, 2021. (Again, you will be notified by early March whether or not your proposal has been accepted and the workshops will be held round June 15, 2021).

    Click this link to register:

    https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1UVMGbq5MEuwSCtL5omEEK7Ti8wLSRR8eVaNc-P6k4BY/viewform?edit_requested=true


    Please direct your questions to slsaconference2020@gmail.com

  • Wednesday, September 30, 2020 3:27 PM | Bryant Simon (Administrator)

    The Southern Labor Studies Association Presents a Discussion of  Jarod Roll's important new book, Poor Man’s Fortune:  White Working-Class Conservativism in American Metal Mining, 1850-1950

    JarodRoll.png

    When:  Nov. 18, 2020, 7PM

    Register Here:  https://temple.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMkceutqT0uGNYZTHcAHxoJwfN_egLwAeG3  

    The Line Up:

    Moderator:  Keri Leigh Merritt, SLSA VP

    Commentators:

    Dave Anderson, Louisiana Tech

    Adriane Lentz-Smith, Duke University

    Adrienne Petty, William and Mary University

    Jarod Roll, University of Mississippi

  • Thursday, September 17, 2020 10:24 AM | Anonymous

    See below for the 2020 SLSA Plenary.  Watch (or watch again) the searing, probing, and hopeful comments about the state of labor and the nation from activist and author Bill Fletcher Jr. and North Carolina AFL-CIO President MaryBe McMillian.  Thanks so much to Nancy MacLean for moderating the session and adding her brilliant voice to the conversation.  

    Please consider joining the SLSA, and/or donating to SLSA to help with the maintenance of the webpage and investing in future programming like this amazing plenary session.  You can do so here.

    Click the below link to watch the plenary:

     GMT20200911-201404_SLSA-Plena_640x360.mp4
  • Thursday, September 17, 2020 10:19 AM | Anonymous

    As part of the 2020 plenary session (or the conference that wasn't), the SLSA held a series of workshops where early career scholars shared a draft of a chapter or article with another scholar in their field and engaged in an intense hour-long back and forth about the piece. 

    SLSA solicited proposals for these workshops ahead of time.  The SLSA Workshop Committee of Brian Kelly (chair), Mary Frederickson, and Sarah McNamara chose the following essays to be workshopped.  Also listed below are the names of the commentators.  Thanks so much to them for their time and generous intellectual spirit.  

    Stay tuned.  We will be doing another round of workshops soon. 


    Here is the workshop program:

    1) Bryant Etheridge (Bridgeport State University), "Valuing People: A Political History of Working-Class Wages in Houston, 1933-1970"

    Commentator:  Max Kromeral, Texas Christian University

    2) Tiffany Gonzalez (Texas A&M): "Fruits of their Labor’: Mexican American Women and American Politics since the 20th Century"

    Commentator: Beth English, Organization of American Historians

    3) Caitlin Kennedy (University of Maryland), "Italian Immigrant Labor on the Gulf Coast"

    Commentator: Carolina Waldron, University of Dayton 

    4) Cullen Moran (Western Carolina University), "Coalfield Women: Community, Gender and Music in the Harlan County War, 1930-1940"

    Commentator: Jesse Wilkerson, West Virginia University

    5) Ashley Rodgers, (Louisiana State University), "The Perfect Laborer: Race, Mechanization, and the Search for the Ideal in Louisiana’s Cane Country,"1865-1900

    Commentator:  Richard Follette, University of Sussex

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CONTACT Southern Labor Studies Association 

c/o Erik Gellman, SLSA/UNC Liaison

Department of History

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

102 Emerson Drive, CB #3195

Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3195

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