Congratulations to James B. Wall, a doctoral candidate in history at the University of Georgia, who was awarded the 2018 Southern Labor Studies Association's Robert H. Zieger Award in Southern Labor Studies. The award committee noted that Wall's essay, "'Boss is Still Boss': Johnson v. City of Albany and the Fight for Affirmative Action in the Black Belt," demonstrated a powerful blend of rigorous research, compelling argumentation, and concern for social justice." 

The Southern Labor Studies Association awards the Robert H. Zieger Prize at the Southern Labor Studies Conference for the best unpublished essay in southern labor studies written by a graduate student or early career scholar, journalist, or activist. The Zieger Prize includes a $500 award.

The Robert H. Zieger Prize was established in 2013 with the cooperation of the Zieger family and members of SLSA. The prize is named in honor of the late Robert H. Zieger–teacher, scholar, and tireless union activist. Zieger was a prolific, award-winning writer whose books include For Jobs and Freedom: Race and Labor in America since 1865 and The CIO, 1935-1955, and three field-defining edited volumes on southern labor history. Zieger served as an officer in the North Central Florida Central Labor Council and an organizer for the United Faculty of Florida. Along with his wife of fifty years, Gay Zieger, an English professor Santa Fe College, he maintained a strong commitment to social justice his entire life. Many of his former students went on to become labor organizers. SLSA hopes that the spirit of Zieger’s combination of rigorous scholarship and his dedicated commitment to improving the lives of working-class people will live on in this prize.

SLSA's latest Working History podcast, "Shaping a New Conservatism in the South," is available for listening on SoundCloud and iTunes. In the episode, Katherine Rye Jewell, Assistant Professor of History at Fitchburg State University, discusses her book, Dollars for Dixie: Business and the Transformation of Conservatism in the Twentieth Century, and the evolution of political and economic conservatism in the twentieth-century South. 

Katherine Rye Jewell is currently Assistant Professor of History at Fitchburg State University, where she teaches modern U.S. history. Her research examines the political and cultural history of the twentieth-century United States. Her book, Dollars for Dixie: Business and the Transformation of Conservatism in the Twentieth Century, was published by Cambridge University press. She is broadly interested in how groups outside of traditional politics nevertheless interact with and reshape policy, regulation, and political discourse. Jewell is currently researching her next book, which focuses on the history of college radio.

Follow Working History on SoundCloud and subscribe on iTunes to check out past episodes and keep up to date on future episodes.

SLSA’s latest Working History podcast, “‘Hillbilly Hellraisers’ and Rethinking the Roots of Populist Politics,” is available for listening on iTunes and SoundCloud. The episode features J. Blake Perkins who discusses his book, Hillbilly Hellraisers: Federal Power and Populist Defiance in the Ozarks, regional relations with the federal government, and the evolution of grassroots politics. The episode is hosted by Beth English, immediate past president of the Southern Labor Studies Association.

J. Blake Perkins is assistant professor of history at Williams Baptist College, and currently serving as Department Chair. His first book is Hillbilly Hellraisers: Federal Power and Populist Defiance in the Ozarks, published by the University of Illinois Press. He is a native of the Arkansas Ozarks.

Follow Working History on SoundCloud and subscribe on iTunes to keep up to date on future episodes.

SLSA’s latest Working History podcast, “Poor Whites in the Slave South,” is available for listening on iTunes and SoundCloud. The episode features Keri Leigh Merritt who discusses her book, Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South, and intersections of race, class, politics, and slavery in the pre-Civil War South. The episode is hosted by Beth English, immediate past president of the Southern Labor Studies Association.

Keri Leigh Merritt works as an independent scholar in Atlanta, Georgia. She received her Ph.D. in history in 2014 from the University of Georgia. Her research focuses on race and class in U.S. history. Her first book is Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South (Cambridge University Press, 2017), and she is co-editor with Matthew Hild of the forthcoming book, Reviving Southern Labor History: Race, Class, and Power. She is currently conducting research for books on radical black resistance during Reconstruction, and on the role of sheriffs and police in the nineteenth century South. Her work on poverty and inequality has garnered multiple awards.

You can listen here.

REGISTER ONLINE: https://www.regonline.com/slsaluncheonatthesha

The annual joint luncheon of the Southern Labor Studies Association and the Organization for the Study of Southern Economy, Culture and Society will be held on Saturday, November 11, 2017, from 11:45 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the Southern Historical Association Annual Meeting in Dallas, TX. Beth English, immediate past president of SLSA will deliver the keynote address, “’To have enough to carry me … if he has not’: Women, Work, and Gendered Expectations in the Nineteenth-Century South.” Robert Korstad, current SLSA president, will preside over the session.

Tickets for the 2017 luncheon may be purchased online or by sending a check for $25 to SLSA Treasurer, Evan Bennett, Department of History, Florida Atlantic University, 777 Glades Road, Boca Raton, FL 33431. The deadline for purchasing tickets is October 25, 2017.

Beth English is director of the Project on Women in the Global Community at the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. She is also an instructor with Princeton University’s Prison Teaching Initiative. English’s research and teaching focus on gender, historical and contemporary labor and working class issues, global economy, and the U.S. and Global Souths. She is the co-editor of Global Women’s Work in Transition (with Mary E. Frederickson and Olga Sanmiguel-Valderrama, forthcoming, Routledge); author of A Common Thread: Labor, Politics, and Capital Mobility in the Textile Industry; and a contributing author to several edited volumes focusing on gender and on the U.S. South. Her recent articles include, “Global Women’s Work: Historical Perspectives on the Textile and Garment Industries” (Journal of International Affairs), and her article, “‘I . . . Have a Lot of Work to Do’: Cotton Mill Work and Women’s Culture in Matoaca, Virginia, 1888-1895” was recognized as one of the Organization of American Historians’ Best American History Essays of 2008 (David Roediger, ed.).

English received her Ph.D. from the College of William and Mary, where she was a Glucksman Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor. She has also taught at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The Southern Labor Studies Association will convene the 2018 Southern Labor Studies Conference in Athens, GA, at the Richard B. Russell Library on the University of Georgia campus, May 17-19, 2018. The conference will gather academics, activists, archivists, and students for three days of panels, roundtables, book discussions, and other sessions organized around the theme of “Dirty Work.” The conference program and registration information will be available shortly.

The “Dirty Work” theme encompasses southern industries (mining, timber, turpentine, farming, chicken processing, catfish, etc.); the service economy (trash collection, domestic service, nursing, food service, etc.); bound labor (slavery, indenture, and prison labor); as well as work deemed morally “dirty” – from sex work and drug-selling to policing and overseeing. Panels will engage public history, archival projects, teaching, oral history, important works in progress, and digital history. The Southern Labor Studies Association defines southern labor and working-class studies broadly, including both historical and contemporary topics from multiple academic disciplines, and regional, comparative, and transnational approaches.

The conference will also include a Dissertation Prospectus Workshop at which doctoral students working in any related discipline, selected through a competitive application process, will meet with a committee of scholars who will provide feedback on their work.