Labor History Commons^™

The Dark Past Of Rhode Island In New Light, Yulyana Torres, Marcus Nevius

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Stray Threads: Factory Women In Fiction From The Freehold Farm To The Rented Room, 1840-1875, Meghan Wadle

English Theses and Dissertations

As industrialism unmoored agrarian-based American values surrounding independence, individualism, and the gender roles attached to labor, it demanded imaginative solutions for these potentially broken ideologies in antebellum fiction. This project, in two parts, explores how factory women stood at the center of the industrializing U.S.’s cultural identity crisis. In Part One authors from Herman Melville to Harriet Jacobs imagine women laboring in the industrial marketplace as a form of deviant dependency. Here, sexualized depictions of female laborers symptomatize national anxieties about how economic change might transform political freedom by simultaneously modifying traditional forms of patriarchal control. In Part Two, Lucy …

Remembering An Abolitionist, Ambassador John R. Miller (May 23, 1938-October 4, 2017), Eleanor Kennelly Gaetan, Donna M. Hughes

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

A memorial for Ambassador-at-Large to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, John R. Miller (May 23, 1938-October 4, 2017). Ambassador Miller believed modern-day slavery, encompassing sex trafficking and forced labor, requires a principled global offensive that the United States is morally obligated to lead. In the four formative years he led the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, 2002 to 2006, John Miller set the office’s course as diplomatically aggressive and programmatically creative. He made the annual Trafficking in Persons report more than a bureaucratic submission, putting daring heroes at the center, and insisting on compelling …

Mybarrio: Emigdio Vasquez And Chicana/O Identity In Orange County, Natalie Lawler, Denise Johnson, Marcus Herse, Jessica Bocinski, Manon Wogahn

Exhibition Catalogs

"Emigdio Vasquez created artwork that challenged Orange County’s more prominent narrative of wealthy beachside neighborhoods. He painted the brown bodies and brown histories that defined our earliest communities and economy... Vasquez produced much of the local art history that Orange County should be known for and should protect. It is with this perspective that Chapman University is proud to present the exhibition, My Barrio: Emigdio Vasquez and Chicana/o Identity in Orange County, in conjunction with the Getty Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative. We hope to initiate discourse not only about Vasquez’s prolific career, but also about the larger political …

The Politics Of Shorter Hours And Corporate-Centered Society: A History Of Work-Time Regulation In The United States And Japan, Keisuke Jinno

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Shorter working hours drew much attention as a means of fighting unemployment and crisis in capitalism during the first half of the twentieth century. Nowadays, shorter work-time is rarely considered a policy option to fix economic or social issues in the United States and Japan. This dissertation presents a history of work-time regulation in the United States and Japan to examine how and why its developments and stalemate took place.

In the big picture, developments of work-time regulation during the first half of the twentieth century were a part of concessional modifications of class relations, a common phenomenon in many …

Design Plan For The Sawmill Town History Wing At The Texas Forestry Museum, Kendall D. Gay

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Texas Forestry Museum in Lufkin, Texas is the only forestry museum in the state. It preserves artifacts and educates visitors about Texas’ forest industry history. The museum has a Sawmill Town History Wing that is outdated and in need of a refreshing exhibit design based on current best practices. Using a previous museum audit as a guide, the new exhibit will have better flow, panel aesthetics, content, and interactive elements. By creating a new exhibit, the museum is better able to educate and entertain the visitors about Texas’ forest industry history.

"Propaganda For Democracy": The Vexed History Of The Federal Theatre Project, Karen E. Gellen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My thesis explores and analyzes the Federal Theater Project’s cultural and political impact during the Depression, as well as the contested legacy of this unique experiment in government-sponsored, broadly accessible cultural expression. Part of the New Deal’s Works Projects Administration, the FTP aimed to provide jobs for playwrights, actors, designers, stagehands, and other theater professionals on relief in the stark period from 1935 to 1939. But the project became a nationwide political and artistic flashpoint, spurring fierce debate over the leadership, politics and impact of this “people’s theater.” The FTP gave professional theater an unprecedented reach into working-class and black …

"The Engine Of Free Expression": The Political Economy Of Copyright In The Colonial British Atlantic And Early National United States, Nora Slonimsky

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In 1985, the Supreme Court of the United States concluded that copyright was included in the Constitution in order to serve as the “engine of free expression.” By providing economic incentive to drive artistic and scientific innovation, the nation received essential information and other tools of learning necessary to make sound political decisions. However, transnational copyright disputes, then and now, frequently resulted in complex and often contradictory understandings of free expression. The formation of copyright in America was thus a far more complex story, and it is that story that forms the basis of this project.

Amidst the many moving …

Content Matters--Teaching "The Case For Reparations," 9-12, Tamara Jaffe-Notier, Carol Friedman

National Youth Advocacy & Resilience Conference

We offer specific materials and plans for teaching the structure and content of Ta-Nehisi Coates' persuasive essay, "The Case for Reparations," and building trustworthy relationships with and among students. By participating in this interactive session, you will practice teaching five specific high school appropriate lessons addressing requisite knowledge and skills for studying this essay, from real estate redlining to building academic vocabulary for rhetorical analysis.

Confronting The Present: Migration In Sidney Mintz’S Journal For The People Of Puerto Rico, Ismael Garcia-Colon

Publications and Research

Sidney Mintz’s field journal for The People of Puerto Rico, published in 1956, is a valuable source for historical anthropological work. Until now, however, it has remained a hidden treasure for the anthropology of migration. By the late 1940s and 1950s, migration was central to the lives of Puerto Rican sugarcane workers and their families, and Mintz recorded important details of it. His journal shows how people maneuvered within fields of power that were full of opportunities and constraints for people seeking to make a living by migrating. Thanks to Mintz, anthropologists can learn about working-class Puerto Ricans’ experiences, lives, …

Patterns Of Enslavement And Economic Oppression Of Central Virginia, Hannah Bedwell

Undergraduate Research Posters

I address how anthropologists can identify the patterns and development of slavery and economic oppression through archaeology and the visualization of Virginia enslavement. I focus on the enslaved people of James Madison's Montpelier. I use 3D modeling as a foundation for integrating enhanced visuals with the goal of presenting a tangible understanding of the enslaved individuals in relation to the artifacts and history of the archaeological sites. I intend to show a common theme in economic oppression by comparing modern themes in slavery and examining Fraser D. Neiman's synthesis of the evolutionary perspective of slavery, and how little has changed …

Father And Servant, Son And Slave: Judaism And Labor In Georgia, 1732–1809, Kylie L. Mccormick

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

In 1732 a philanthropic trusteeship was granted the charter to Georgia with the lofty goals of bringing aid to the impoverished in the British Empire and the persecuted Protestants of Europe. Within these goals was an emphasis on using the labor of indentured white servants, an unofficial ban on slavery, and a reluctance to allow Jewish colonists. To understand how both slavery and Judaism took hold in Georgia, this two part study explores the changing labor institutions through the lives of Benjamin Sheftall and his youngest son Levi—the two men who maintained the first Vital Records for Savanah’s Jewry. Benjamin’s …

The Life Of The Factory? Or The Life Of The Farm? That Is The Question., Adam C. Mcelwain, Bethany Lutwin

Migration in Global Context Symposium

Abstract: The focus of this lesson on Global Migration is the emotion behind young women’s decision to leave for the city and work in the factory, or stay in their hometown. Both have an opportunity cost for a life that may be better. The essential question is “Is it better to be a factory girl who has emigrated to the city or a country girl living and working on a farm?” Students will examine the motivation behind leaving the country for a factory job in the city or staying behind and working in a rural setting like a farm. They …

Run Of The Mine: Miners, Farmers, And The Non-Union Spirit Of The Gilded Age, 1886-1896, Dana M. Caldemeyer

Theses and Dissertations--History

“Run of the Mine” examines why workers refused to join unions in the late nineteenth century. Through a focus on the men and women involved in the southern Midwest coal industry who quit or did not join unions, this dissertation analyzes the economic, geographic, and racial factors that contributed to workers’ attitudes toward national unions like the United Mine Workers of America (UMW). It argues that the fluidity between rural industries that allowed residents to work in multiple occupations throughout the year dramatically shaped worker expectations for their unions. This occupational fluidity that allowed miners to farm and farmers to …

Women At The Crossroads, Women At The Forefront, American Women In Letterpress Printing In The Nineteenth Century, Dianne L. Roman Ms

Theses and Dissertations

The significant role of the female printer in the American home-based print shops during the colonial and early republic periods has been documented in print history, socioeconomic, labor, and women studies, yet with the industrialization of the printing trade, women’s presence is thought to have disappeared. Contrary to the belief that industrialization of the print shop eradicated women’s involvement in skilled employments such as typesetting, the creation of the Women’s Cooperative Printing Union in California and the creation and chartering of the Women’s Typographical Union in New York, both in the late 1860s, clearly indicate that women continued to work …

Raymond E. Jackson And Segregation In The American Federation Of Musicians, 1900-1944, Lance Boos

History Theses

In 1944, the American Federation of Musicians abolished the practice of subsidiary local chapters, granting autonomous charters to the twelve chapters of African American musicians who were bound to a white parent chapter in their respective cities. While most black musicians in the AFM were organized in “separate but equal” chapters, those under subsidiary status were obligated to pay dues to the white local but generally had no access to union offices, voting rights in union elections, control over booking of and payment for jobs, or representation at the national convention. This change was prompted by years of advocacy by …

Ways We Remember: Rethinking Symbols Of Italian American History And Imagining Alternative Narratives, Kathryn N. Anastasi

American Studies Honors Projects

My project re-examines dominant historical narratives of Christopher Columbus and assimilation of southern Italian immigrants to the United States. Arguing that such narratives partly result from historic anxiety surrounding southern Italians’ unstable whiteness, I challenge masculinist, white-washed histories by centering and contextualizing a history of Italian immigrant garment worker and labor leader Angela Bambace (1898-1975). By weaving my own exploration of my Italian immigrant ancestors’ pasts throughout, I ultimately encourage other white descendants of European immigrants to explore their histories in a critical and loving way that "resurrects" histories without sanctifying historical figures or their white descendants to racial innocence.

Buffalo Soldier, Deserter, Criminal: The Remarkably Complicated Life Of Charles Ringo, Cicero Fain

History Faculty Research

This case study chronicles the remarkably complicated life of Charles Ringo who served nearly two enlistments as a Buffalo Soldier before deserting and embarking on a life of petty crime. It details his military service, his nomadic occupational life, his marriage, his acquittal of two sets of murders--one of his stepsons in West Virginia, the other of a white married couple in Illinois, and the assistance of white authorities who intervened to save and protect Ringo from the predations of angry mobs and racist courts. It situates Ringo’s exploits within the oppositional/alternative nature of African American working-class life, the failure …

Claiming Equality: Puerto Rican Farmworkers In Western New York, Ismael Garcia-Colon

Publications and Research

n July of 1966, a group of Puerto Rican migrant workers protested against police brutality and discrimination in North Collins, a small farm community of western NewYork. Puerto Rican farmworkers made up a substantial part of the population, and had transformed the ethnic, racial, and gender landscape of the town. Local officials and residents produced and reproduced images of Puerto Ricans as inferior subjects within US racial and ethnic hierarchies. Those negative images of Puerto Ricans shaped the way in which local authorities elaborated policies of social control against these farmworkers in North Collins. At the same time, Puerto Rican …

American Fantasies Of Masculine, Physical Labor And The Dangerous Bodies Of Pacific Island Whalemen In Roger Starbuck's The Golden Harpoon And Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, Jennifer Schell

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Throughout the nineteenth-century, writers, such as James Fenimore Cooper and Joseph C. Hart, fairly consistently appropriated the New England whaling industry for national purposes. They claimed the economic successes of the industry as American successes, and they positioned the whalemen as exemplary American workers. However, not all American whalemen were native-born Americans; some were foreign-born laborers. The presence of Polynesian workers and their racialized laboring bodies - often described as monstrous, grotesque, and repulsive - disrupted nationalistic appropriations of the whaling industry and its workers. What was so dangerous about these men was not just that were reputed to be …

The Role And Effect Of Advertising On Women During World War Ii, Laura Elizabeth Francis

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

Advertising had an overwhelming effect on women during World War II; many women were influenced by advertising in the media to behave a certain way, buy certain products, and also support the war effort in a variety of ways. In the 1940s while many American women’s husbands, fiances, boyfriends, brothers, and sons were going off to fight in the War abroad, many women were fighting a war of their own on the home front. While men could prove they were active patriotic citizens by fighting in the military and taking government positions, female’s roles were re-written to show what they …

"Joined In The Battle Of Common Humanity": Irish Nationalism And Labor Organizing In Scranton, Pennsylvania, 1876-1883, Timothy Robert Donnelly

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The lrish-Catholic working-class of Scranton, Pennsylvania used social networks fanned in Irish nationalist organizations to expand the men's labor movement between 1879 and 1883. Formed in 1879, the Irish National Land League worked for land reform in Ireland and called on Irish-Americans to serve as fund-raisers for the cause. The Land League prospered in the Scranton area drawing into its ranks many Iiish-Americans that worked in the anthracite coal mines. The Knights of Labor, lend by Scranton native Terence V. Powderly, had established multiple local assemblies in the region, but had a difficult time recruiting hi sh-Catholic members. Leaders of …

Ms. Joanna Boley-Lee On Leisure, Maureen Elgersman Lee

We Exist Series 4: Quotes

Interviewer: Maureen Elgersman Lee.

Interviewee: Ms. Joanna Boley-Lee (age 66; born 1937 in Newark, New Jersey; lived in Maine for 8 ½ years)

“I think my closing reflections would be that when I came to Lewiston I remember walking across the bridge that goes across the Androscoggin, the extension of Main Street, just sort of looking out, and there was a black man with a camera and I thought, good, there's a black person. So I went up to him and I introduced myself, told him I was new in the area and he tells me he was visiting. I …

Mrs. Rose Jackson On Employment, Hamida Suja

Quotes

Mrs. Rose Jackson Full Interview

Rose Jackson was born in Louisville, Mississippi, to Willie O Clayton Hathorne and Bertha Ophelia (Young) Hathorne; she had three sisters and three brothers. She left school at fifteen to marry her first husband, with whom she had five children; after his death, she married John Jackson, with whom she had another daughter. She worked as a cleaner and hairdresser, and received her diploma from Portland High night school. At the time of this interview, she had been living in Maine 40 years; her family moved here because she had a brother-in-law who had been …

Reverend Albert Jackson And Mrs. Clemmie Jackson On Education, Maureen Elgersman-Lee

Quotes

Reverend Albert Jackson and Mrs. Clemmie Jackson Full Interview

Rev. Albert Jackson was born in Slabfork, West Virginia, in 1942. At the time of this interview, he had been living in the Lewiston Auburn area for around forty three years. Clemmie Jackson, Rev. Jackson’s wife, was born in Marengo County, Alabama, in 1948; at the time of this interview, she had been living in Lewiston Auburn for around three years. The couple had three sons. Rev. Jackson graduated from high school in Lewiston Auburn; Mrs. Jackson graduated high school in Alabama, and received a degree in sociology with a minor …

Reverend Albert Jackson And Mrs. Clemmie Jackson On Employment, Maureen Elgersman-Lee

Quotes

Reverend Albert Jackson and Mrs. Clemmie Jackson Full Interview

(Clemmie not pictured)

Rev. Albert Jackson was born in Slabfork, West Virginia, in 1942. At the time of this interview, he had been living in the Lewiston Auburn area for around forty three years. Clemmie Jackson, Rev. Jackson’s wife, was born in Marengo County, Alabama, in 1948; at the time of this interview, she had been living in Lewiston Auburn for around three years. The couple had three sons. Rev. Jackson graduated from high school in Lewiston Auburn; Mrs. Jackson graduated high school in Alabama, and received a degree in …

Reverend Albert Jackson And Mrs. Clemmie Jackson On Leisure, Maureen Elgersman Lee

We Exist Series 4: Quotes

Interviewer: Maureen Elgersman Lee

Interviewees: Reverend Albert Jackson (born in Slabfork, Virginia; age 61; lived in Maine for 43 years) and Mrs. Clemmie Jackson (born March 1948 in Marengo County, Alabama; age 55; lived in Maine for 3.5 years)

“Well I like it. You know, I describe it as, ah, a place where you can shop. I notice when it rain, a lot of people go out to eat. They like to eat here in Maine. And I've noticed -- I've (inaudible) –but this is a good area to live in.”

Interviewer: “Are there any events in Lewiston and Auburn's …

Mr. James Sheppard On Leisure, Sanela Zukic

We Exist Series 4: Quotes

Interviewer: Sanela Zukic

Interviewee: Mr. James Sheppard (born in New York City in 1924; both his parents immigrated from Antigua in the West Indies to Canada, then they came to the United States in 1923; moved to Maine in 1971).

“But in addition to that we'd have lots of summer events: picnics and that sort. But that's separate; that's a different thing.”

“Between my wife and I, we saw to it that they did a lot of reading. And we did a lot of traveling. We did a lot of traveling to the Caribbean and South America, and we took …

Emma Jackson On Employment, Maureen Elgersman-Lee

Quotes

Emma Jackson Full Interview

Emma Jackson was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1941. She and her husband John Isaac Jackson had three children, and at the time of the interview she had been living in the Lewiston-Auburn area for forty five years. She spent the first ten years of her life in Maine doing domestic work, and then worked in the nursing field for thirty years, at a number of different facilities owned by Central Maine Medical Center. She discusses her life in Lewiston, challenges in finding housing she and her husband faced when they first moved to the area, …

Indiana Women And Their Roles In The Works Progress Administration: Familiar Roles, New Opportunities, Tamara S. Ayer

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

For American women, the 1920s were a time of advancement in several areas. They enjoyed a greater role in public life through their involvement in social issues of the day and their fights for the right to vote, and they were seeking and attaining higher education in greater numbers than ever before. Most importantly, though, were the steps American women took toward more representation in the world of work. On the cusp of the Great Depression, more women entered the work force than ever before. They secured jobs in fields traditionally deemed "women's work" such as social workers, teachers, nurses …