Seminar: Topics in American Working-Class History Return to main page

Michael Trotti History Department 412 Muller  (607)274-1591

Readings
Writing
Research
External Sites
 

Who Built America?

This seminar interrogates the history of the working class in America. This is a huge topic, but we will not be investigating every aspect of the lives of the working class throughout American history - that is far too much for us. What we will do is to track down a number of key themes in the field, the most important methodologies used, and center our study upon a series of important books and articles that will give us a sense of the range of this sub-field of American history.

Along the way, you will discover much that is typically bypassed in the story we tell of our history. Much of the most exciting work in the historical profession in the last generation has come from the study of the past "from the bottom, up" - and that is precisely what this seminar is focused upon.

Below are some of the readings, and an idea about what the written work is for the class. At the end are some very interesting websites I've found relevant to this course and its themes. Contact me if you have any questions!

Readings:
 
Benjamin, Jules, A Student's Guide to History (2004). This slim volume contains a host of helpful guidelines for success as a student of history. If you have an older edition, that will serve.

Boris, Eileen and Nelson Lichtenstein, Major Problems in the History of American Workers, 2nd Edition (2003). A sweeping series of primary and secondary sources that will help to give us the full sweep of Labor history.

Cowie, Jefferson, Capital Moves: RCA's 70-year Quest for Cheap Labor (1999). Winner of the Taft Prize for the best work in labor history in 2000, this study follows the movement of RCA jobs from the 1930s to the 1990s, showing the interplay between local working class communities and corporate decisions to maximize profits. This is a cutting-edge piece of scholarship written by a fellow now on East Hill.

Geoghegan, Thomas, Which Side Are You On?: Trying to be for Labor when It's Flat on Its Back (1991, 2004). A very readable and meaningful story of one man's efforts to work for the Labor movement in an era when it is falling apart.

Hall, Jacquelyn, et. al., Like a Family: the Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World (2000). Winner of a number of awards, this study expands out from the "shop floor" to study the wider working-class community. This is less a study of labor or unions than of the whole community in which working class people live.

Hamper, Ben, Rivethead: Tales from the Assembly Line (1992). A personal, irreverent (downright offensive at times!) story of one man's experience on the GM assembly line in Flint, Michigan. This will help us to make the jump from our college experience into the very different realities of working class life.

Von Drehle, Dave, Triangle: The Fire that Changed America (2004). A very readable, nuanced view of the working class in NY in the early-20th century and the tragedy that made the country pay attention to working class issues.

Additional readings available on the web -- you can get to them by clicking here. . .

. . . if you have access to the JSTOR database:

• Cohen, Lizabeth, "Encountering Mass Culture at the Grassroots: the Experience of Chicago Workers in the 1920s" American Quarterly 41 (1989): 6-33.

[note: computers on the IC network -- which has a paid subscription to these services -- will all arrive at an article by clicking on it. Home computers for IC faculty and students will not, because these databases will not recognize you as a subscriber. Sadly, this also now applies to those on ResNet, despite assurances to the library that their new software would allow ResNet to do this. You can get to them, but you have to go to the IC library website, enter your password to gain access to these databases, then search the databases for the articles. Others not tied to IC will not be able to open these documents unless you have also paid a subscription to these services.]

. . . if you have access to the web:

• Jefferson Cowie, "For the Long Run: The Employee Free Choice Act" CommonDreams.Org (27 April 2006).

Recommended Reading for all my classes:

• Strunk and White, The Elements of Style. This is not required, and I did not specifically order copies for the course.  It is, however, the most concise and helpful guide to strong writing, and I suggest that you purchase and read a copy.  The student bookstore always has a stockpile of them, as do most used bookstores in town.  It is cheap, short, and extremely helpful -- what a deal!

Writing:
 
Most of the writing in this course will be geared toward a thoroughly researched, gracefully written seminar paper on a topic concerning American working-class history that students and I will agree upon together.

Once we decide on a topic for your final project, students will write a 3-page book review on an important secondary source for their paper (again, more instructions will be forthcoming).

The lion's share of the writing in the course will be a research paper, based in primary and secondary sources, of 20-25 pages. We will take on this project in stages - first defining a topic, then developing a bibliography of sources for students to explore (one secondary source of which will be the subject of the book review). The class will begin writing the paper with a one-paragraph statement of the argument accompanied by an outline of the paper, followed by a writing sample, a rough draft, and, in the last week, the final draft.

At the end, I will ask students to present their findings to the class and to critique the work of a fellow student. That brief critique will be the final written assignment.

Research:

Ithaca College and Cornell offer a tremendous number of opportunities for researching the history of labor and the working class. Here follow some sources that will be of help to you in your projects.

Journals:
The major history journals -- American Historical Review, Journal of American History -- will occasionally publish terrific pieces on the Working Class. There is also Labor History (at IC), and other, more general leftist journals: Dissent, New Left Review, and some more popular magazines like Mother Jones, Harper's, Atlantic, and others. These are indexed through the web sources below.

Books:
a few in the reference collection and hundreds in the stacks, generally in the "HD" section.

Web: several resources connected to the IC Library webpage. "JSTOR" and, particularly, "America: History and Life" offer good ways to get to scholarly works by historians. Both databases can be searched by subject and JSTOR is full text. Other options for similar sources: "ProQuest" or Infotrac's"Expanded Academic Index".

The ILR: The Cornell Library can be a great resource for anyone working on a research project. Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations is a tremendous resource for us - their Catherwood library is one of the best sources for labor materials in the nation. NY residents can get a library card and check out materials, but everyone can use both their resources and their archives on site. This may be very valuable to your research, and it is only a short bus ride away. Included here are a host of other labor periodicals that IC does not carry, a very good reference collection, and much much more.

InterLibrary Loan (ILL) -- Don't forget how huge the IC library becomes when you order books from all over the country through interlibrary loan! If it is out there, we can get a copy (almost).

External Links to Sites Relevant to this Course:

New Deal Exhibits -- The New Deal Network has put together exhibits and primary documents on the 1930s that are rather impressive.

The Dramas of Haymarket -- an exhibit from the Chicago Historical Society on the 1886 Haymarket bombing.

Inside an American Factory: Films of the Westinghouse Works, 1904

America at Work, America at Leisure: Motion Pictures from 1894-1915

Like a Family -- tied to the award-winning book of the same title, this site includes interview clips you can listen to, photographs you can see, as well as brief interpretive essays on several themes of the book.

Between and Rock and a Hard Place -- Smithsonian's American History Museum created this online exhibition concerning American sweatshops from 1820 to the present.

A. Philip Randolph -- The George Meany Memorial Archives have put together a brief exhibit with photographs of the life and work of this Civil Rights and Labor activist.

This website is occasionally maintained by Michael Trotti. (Last update: 24 August 2006).