13 Nov Labor and Empire
Vivek Chibber (History, New York University)
Thursday, November 13, 2014 / 7:00 PM
HSSB 6020, McCune Conference Room
This talk inaugurates a conference on “Labor and Empire” that continues through November 15. Chibber is the author of Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital (2013). Conference participants include Sven Beckert, Avi Chomsky, Dana Frank, Julie Green, Paul Kramer, Jana Lipman, Elizabeth McKillen, and Steve Striffler.
Sponsored by LABOR: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas, the Hull Chair in Feminist Studies, and the Center for the Study of Work, Labor, and Democracy.
Conference Schedule
Thursday, November 13, 2014
Keynote Lecture McCune Conference Room, Humanities and Social Science Building 6th floor (seats 100)
7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
Lecture by Vivek Chibber with Reception to Follow
Friday, November 14, 2014
Continental Breakfast McCune Conference Room
7:30 a.m. – 8:30 a.m.
Session One
McCune Conference Room
8:30 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.
Opening Plenary Panel with Julie Greene, Jana Lipman, and Paul Kramer
Session Two
10:45 a.m. – 12:45 p.m.
Panel A—The Killing Labor of Empire McCune Conference Room
Lawrence McDonnell, Commentator
Eric Arnesen, Chair
John Donoghue, “Conscription and Its Discontents in England’s Quest for a Caribbean Empire, ca. 1654-1656”
Amy Greenberg, “Ambivalent Imperialists: Common Soldiers in Antebellum America’s Wars of Empire”
Hope McGrath, “Uncle Sam’s Deserters: Military Labor and Resistance, 1865-1900”
Panel B—Empire Strikes Back: Migrations and Resistance HSSB 6056 (seats 25) or HSSB 4080 (seats 50)
Lara Putnam, Commentator
Chris McAuley, Chair
Aldo A. Lauria-Santiago, “How Puerto Rican Workers Reactivated New York City’s Labor Movement in the mid-1950s”
Allan E.S. Lumba, “Common Wealth in Precarious Times: Militant Politics and Transient Labor across the Global Philippines, 1919-1942”
Michael Snodgrass, “Mexican Debates on Migration, Empire, and Development in Comparative Perspective”
Lunch, McCune Conference Room
12:45 p.m. – 1:45 p.m.
Session Three
2:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Panel A—Forced and Conscripted Labor McCune Conference Room
Sven Beckert, Commentator
Victor Silverman, Chair
Sayuri Guthrie-Shimizu, “Imperial War Mobilizations: Korean Conscripted Labor in Wartime Japan and Indigenous Labor in Wartime Alaska”
Christopher Florio, “Free Cotton, Free Labor, Free India: Poverty in an Age of Emancipation”
Benjamin Weber, “Building the Highway to Empire: Sovereignty and Involuntary Servitude in the Panama Canal Zone, 1904-1944”
Panel B—Occupation Governments HSSB 4041 (seats 40)
Mary Renda, Commentator
Jana Lipman, Chair
Matthew Basso, “Imperial Masculinity and the Construction of a Biracial Settler Colony in Aotearoa/New Zealand during World War II”
Kornel Chang, “Liberating Repression: Decolonizing Korean Workers under American Occupation, 1945-1948”
Alan McPherson, “Labor and US Military Occupations in Latin America, 1912-1934”
Dinner Multipurpose Room, Student Activities Building, 1st floor
6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
Lecture by Dana Frank
Saturday, November 15, 2015
Continental Breakfast McCune Conference Room
7:30 a.m. – 8:30 a.m.
Session Four
8:30 a.m. – 10:30 a.m
Panel A—Resource Extraction McCune Conference Room
Myrna Santiago, Commentator
Joan Sangster, Chair
Betsy Beasley, “Wildcat: Outsourcing, Expertise, and Oil in Postwar Houston”
Avi Chomsky and Steve Striffler, “Labor, Indigenous Rights, and International Solidarity: Environmentalism across the Empire”
Steven Osuna, “Environmental Justice, Labor, and Gold in El Salvador in the Era of Neoliberalism”
Panel B—Science of Empire HSSB 4041 or HSSB 6056
Alex Lichtenstein, Commentator
Alice O’Connor, Chair
Katherine Benton-Cohen, “The Globetrotting Government Labor Economist Victor S. Clark”
Chad D. Frazier, “The Prosperity of the People: The 1899 Census and Debates over Economic Uplift in Puerto Rico”
David Roth Singerman, “Sugar Workers and Scientific Control in Puerto Rico and Hawaii”
Panel C—US Labor’s Foreign Policy HSSB 4020
Leon Fink, Commentator
Elizabeth Tandy Shermer, Chair
Larissa Rosa Correa, “Tourism or Labor Education? Brazilian Labor Leaders Travel to the United States in the 1960s”
Thomas Field, “Modernizing Labor: Bolivia and the AFL-CIO’s Cold War in Latin America, 1962-1964”
Elizabeth McKillen, “Working-Class Anti-Imperialism vs. Wilsonian Exceptionalism, 1912-1920”
Session 5
10:45 a.m. – 12:45 p.m.
Panel A—Imperial Migrations McCune Conference Room
Andrew Zimmerman, Commentator
Tobias Higbie, Chair
Reena N. Goldthree, “‘De Black Man Fights wid de Shovel and de Pick’: Race, Transnational Labor Migration, and Military Service in World War I”
Andrew Urban, “Globalization’s Service Sector: The Maritime Movement of Chinese Cooks and Stewards, 1882-1924”
Micah Wright, “Building an Occupation: Puerto Rican Laborers in the Dominican Republic, 1916-1924”
Panel B—Working for the US Military HSSB 6056
Kimberley Phillips, Commentator
Richard Wells, Chair
Rebecca Herman Weber, “Workers’ Rights and the Construction of US Airbases in Cuba, 1940-1949”
Lauren Hirshberg, “Disciplining the Labor of US Military Empire in the Marshall Islands during the Cold War”
Justin F. Jackson, “Carrying the Army’s Burdens: Cargadores and American Military Labor in the Philippine War”
Panel C—US-Pacific Labor Relations HSSB 4041
Marilyn Lake, Commentator
Nelson Lichtenstein, Chair
Holger Droessler, “Coals for Empire: The US Naval Station in American Samoa and the Roots of Anti-Colonial Resistance, 1898-1930”
JoAnna Poblete, “Intra-Colonial Filipino Labor Petitions and Protests in the US Territory of Hawaii”
Colleen Woods, “Building Empire’s Archipelago: The Politics of Filipino Labor in the Pacific”
Lunch McCune Conference Room
12:45 p.m. – 1:30 p.m.
Session 6
1:30 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Closing Plenary Panel with Dan Bender and Eileen Boris McCune Conference Room