Civic Labors ─ Scholar Activism and Working-Class Studies

Labor studies scholars and working-class historians have long worked at the crossroads of academia and activism. The essays in this collection examine the challenges and opportunities for engaged scholarship in the United States and abroad. A diverse roster of contributors discuss how participation in current labor and social struggles guides their campus and community organizing, public history initiatives, teaching, mentoring, and other activities. They also explore the role of research and scholarship in social change, while acknowledging that intellectual labor complements but never replaces collective action and movement building. Contributors: Kristen Anderson, Daniel E. Atkinson, James R. Barrett, Susan Roth Breitzer, Susan Chandler, Sam Davies, Dennis Deslippe, Eric Fure-Slocum, Colin Gordon, Michael Innis-Jiménez, Stephanie Luce, Joseph A. McCartin, John W. McKerley, Matthew M. Mettler, Stephen Meyer, David Montgomery, Kim E. Nielsen, Peter Rachleff, Ralph Scharnau, Jennifer Sherer, Shelton Stromquist, Emily E. LB. Twarog, and John Williams-Searle.

Dennis Deslippe is an associate professor of American studies and women's and gender studies at Franklin and Marshall College. He is the author of "Rights, not Roses": Unions and the Rise of Working-Class Feminism . Eric Fure-Slocum is an associate professor of history at St. Olaf College and the author of Contesting the Postwar City: Working-Class and Growth Politics in 1940s Milwaukee . John W. McKerley is a research associate at the University of Iowa Labor Center and co-editor of Foot Soldiers for Democracy: The Men, Women, and Children of the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement .