Midwest Labor and Working Class History Colloquium
April 6-7, 2007
Schaeffer Hall, University of Iowa
Keynote Address
Benedicto Martinez, “Building Transnational Labor Alliances: A Response to Corporate Globalization”
Friday, April 6, 2007, 7:30 p.m.
Schaeffer Hall
Room 40
University of Iowa
The organizers of MLWCH 2007 are pleased to announce Benedicto Martinez, a senior officer in Mexico’s largest independent and democratic labor movement, the Authentic Workers’ Front (FAT), General Secretary of the National Steelworkers’ Union (STIMAHCS), and Vice President of the National Union of Workers, will present “Building Transnational Labor Alliances: A Response to Corporate Globalization” on April 6.
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Saturday, April 7
- Registration and Breakfast: 8:00 - 8:30
- Plenary Session: 8:30 – 9:45
- Marcel van der Linden, “The ‘Globalization’ of Labour and Working-Class History and its Consequences”
- David Moberg, “Solidarity Without Borders”
- David Montgomery, “Workers’ Movements in the U.S. Confront Imperialism: The Progressive Era Experience”
Session I. 10:00 – 11:45
Room 176
a) The Community, The Department Store, and the Worker: Labor, Race and Public Image Problems at Younkers’ Department Store, 1937-1939 (Matt Mettler, University of Iowa)
b) “The type of people who would resort to violence”: Class and Segregation on the Southside of Chicago, 1945-1960 (Will Cooley, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
c) Guts, Gender, and Steel–Women of the IS: “Sixties” Radicals Become Working-Class Revolutionaries (Martin Smith, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
Chair: Jeffrey Helgeson, University of Illinois at Chicago
Room 151
a) Religious Experience in Working-Class Detroit, 1918-1939 (Mathew Pehl, Brandeis)
b) Señor Rivera’s Detroit: Limits of Working Class Formation in the Motor City, 1929 1934 (Jake Hall, University of Iowa)
c) Secret Identities: Working-Class Identities in the 1970s (Jason Whisler, University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee)
Chair: Megan Threlkeld, University of Iowa
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Session II. 1:00-2:45
Room 176
a) His Majesty, The Janitor (Benjamin Peterson, University of Illinois at Chicago)
b) Working Women’s Boarding Homes in Minneapolis, 1900-1920. (Monica Foley, University of Iowa)
c) “We Feel Able and Competent to Carry Out a Program for the Welfare of the Community”: The Initial Appeal of the Chicago Area Project (Dana Quartana, University of Iowa)
Chair: Amanda Trevors, University of Iowa
Room 151
a) “Taking the Political Action”: African-American Trade Unionists and Liberal Politics in San Francisco, 1967-1976 (John Rosen, University of Illinois at Chicago)
b) “Knock the Slum Out of Housing”: Community Building in Black Chicago, 1941-1947 (Jeffrey Helgeson, University of Illinois at Chicago)
c) Outside the Ark: Independent Black Politics in Urban Missouri, 1877-1900 (John McKerley, University of Iowa)
Chair: Meghan Warner, University of Iowa
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Session III. 3:00 – 4:45
Room 176
a) “Cheaper than Shingles”: Human Worth, Workers’ Bodies, and Industrial Culture, 1877-1910 (Mike Rosenow, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
b) German Americans, African Americans, and labor in post-emancipation St. Louis (Kristen Anderson, University of Iowa)
c) Representations of and Reactions by the Turkish ‘Other’ in Germany, 1968-2006: A Critique of the Films of Werner Rainer Fassbinder, Kanak Attak, and Fatih Akin (Brian Miller, University of Iowa)
Chair: Jason Verber, University of Iowa
Room 151
a) ‘To Throw Additional Safeguards About the Lives, Limbs and Health of Miners’: Injury, Control and Liability under the Illinois Mine Act, 1879-1911 (Zachary Lutz, University of Northern Illinois)
b) “The Coming Struggle:” The International Brotherhood of Bookbinders and Their Transition from Artisan to Operative (Dan Brunsvold, University of Illinois at Chicago)
c) Lean Production and its effects on the Shop Floor and the UAW (Jason Kozlowski, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
Chair: John McKerley, University of Iowa