FOR OUTSTANDING DISSERTATION IN UNITED STATES LABOR AND WORKING-CLASS HISTORY

The Labor and Working Class History Association (LAWCHA) is pleased to announce its second annual Dissertation Prize. This prize has been established with the cooperation with the University of Illinois Press. LAWCHA, founded in 1998, encourages the study of working-class men and women, their lives, workplaces, communities, organizations, cultures, political activities, and societal contexts. It aims to promote an international, theoretically informed, comparative, interdisciplinary, cross-cultural, and diverse labor and working-class history. Its journal is the prize-winning Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas.

The prize is named in honor of the late Herbert G. Gutman, who was a pioneering labor historian in the U.S. and a founder of the University of Illinois Press’s “Working Class in American History” Series. LAWCHA hopes that the spirit of Gutman’s inquiry into the many facets of labor and working-class history will live on in this prize. The winner will receive a cash prize of $500 from LAWCHA and a publishing contract with the University of Illinois Press. The prize is contingent upon the author’s acceptance of the contract with the University of Illinois Press.

Eligible dissertations must be in English, concerned with U.S. labor and working-class history broadly conceived, and must have been defended in the academic year 2007-08 (September 1, 2007-August 31, 2008). Applicants must be members of LAWCHA at the time of the submission. The winner will be announced by March 15, 2009 and will receive the award at the annual LAWCHA conference, held in 2009 in Chicago, Illinois, May 27-31.

Send (4) four hard copies of the dissertation, along with a letter of endorsement from the dissertation advisor stating the date of the defense by November 30, 2008 to:

LAWCHA
c/o Sanford Institute of Public Policy
Duke University
Box 90239
Durham, NC 27708-0239

We should also list past winners and current prize committee members.
2008 winner: Jarod Roll, “Road to the Promised Land: Rural Rebellion in the New Cotton South, 1890-1945” (Northwestern University, Nancy Maclean advisor).