2011 Kemp Symposium
"Labor and Human Emancipation: Cosmopolitan and Vernacular Histories"
Friday, May 6
Main Lounge, Moulton Union
Race, Labor, and the Meanings of Freedom
9-11 A.M.
Gunther Peck, Duke University - "Trafficking in Race: Locating the Origins of White Slavery, 1660-1720"
Adam McKeown, Columbia University - "The Social Life of Chinese Labor, 1840-1890"
Brian Purnell, Bowdoin College - "Building Black Citizenship: Protests Against Racial Discrimination in Construction Unions During the 1960s"
Discussant: Belinda Kong, Bowdoin College
Labor, Radicalism and Contested Visions of Liberation
11:15 A.M. -1:15 P.M.
Manu Goswami, New York University - "A Conspiracy of Equals: Revisiting the Meerut Communist Conspiracy"
David Gordon, Bowdoin College - "Imagining Freedom on the Central African Copperbelt, 1930-1945"
Alex Lichtenstein, Florida International University - "From 'Spontaneous Upheaval' to Shop-Floor Power: Works Committees and the Struggle for Industrial Citizenship in South Africa, 1973-1979"
Discussant: Allen Wells, Bowdoin College
Theorizing Labor, Humanity and Citizenship
2:45-4:45 P.M.
Robert Sobak, Bowdoin College - "Reading Plato on the Shop Floor: Labor History as Intellectual History"
Rachel Sturman, Bowdoin College - "Indian Indenture and the History of Transnational Labor Rights"
Leila Kawar, Bates College - "Transnational Governance vs. Transnational Solidarity: Contemporary Struggles for Migrant Labor Rights"
Discussant: Caroline Shaw, Bates College
Keynote Speaker: José Moya, Barnard College
5 P.M.
"Anarchism: The Working-Class Movement that wanted to Emancipate Humanity"
Beam Classroom, VAC
Keynote speaker Jose Moya received his Ph. D. from Rutgers University and is a professor at Barnard College, Columbia University. His book Cousins and Strangers: Spanish Immigrants in Buenos Aires , 1850-1930 (1998) received five awards and the journal Historical Methods 34 (2001) devoted a forum to its theoretical and methodological contributions to migration studies. He is currently editing Latin American Historiography(Oxford UP, forthcoming) and working on the socio-cultural history of anarchism in belle époque Buenos Aires and the Atlantic world.
Adam McKeown is an associate professor of history at Columbia University. He has written on the Chinese diaspora, global migration, and the history of passports and migration control. He is now researching the history of globalization since the 1760s.
Gunther Peck is the Fred W. Shaffer Associate Professor of History and Public Policy at the Sanford School of Social Policy, Duke University. His book Reinventing Free Labor: Padrones and Immigrant Workers in the North American West, 1880-1930,examined the histories of three infamous padrones and the immigrant workers they imported to North America and exploited and won the Taft prize for best book in North American Labor History, the Billington Prize for the best book in frontier history, and the Pacific Coast Branch Award for best book in comparative North American history.
Alex Lichtenstein is an associate professor of history at Florida International University. He is the author of Twice the Work of Free Labor, dealing with the history of prison labor in the U.S. South. His current research examines the interplay of the civil rights and labor movements in Florida during the 1940s, with a focus on the infamous "Red Pepper" senatorial campaign of 1950. In 2000 he went to South Africa on a Fulbright Fellowship, where he became interested in comparative history and began research on the history of black and "mixed" trade unions under apartheid.
Manu Goswami is an assistant professor of history at New York University. Her research interests include modern South Asian history, historical political economy, nationalism, history of globalization, and social theory. She is the author of Producing India: From Colonial Economy to National Space.