I am thrilled to announce a new collaboration between LaborOnline and LABOR: Studies in Working Class History called Going Public. As a new section of LABOR, this series will focus on public history broadly conceived.
In the union context, “going public” is the term used when an organizing campaign that has been undercover for weeks or months is revealed to the employer by the workers. This is a moment of real bravery – workers putting themselves out there with the belief that collective action is the next step to improving their working conditions and having a voice on the job.
LABOR’s Going Public embraces this notion of bravery and collectivity. We want to examine how scholars are engaging with the public.
- What are you doing as a scholar-activist?
- What new debates are you engaging in about the very complicated relationships between the academy and the community?
- How are we responding to the current campus attacks on free speech and academic freedom?
- How can we present our research, teaching, and ideas in new and innovative ways?
We are seeking pieces that go deep and challenge the limits of typical peer-reviewed scholarly articles (although we like those too!). Each piece published in LABOR’s Going Public will have a companion piece in LaborOnline that takes advantage of the digital platform. In our inaugural LaborOnline blog, historian Max Krochmal and his co-authors introduce us to Don’t Stand Alone: Black Labor Organizing in New Orleans, a collaborative public history exhibit that made its debut in 2024 at Tulane University’s Small Center for Collaborative Design. Their essay in LABOR goes into detail about how they conceived of and collaborated on this exhibit with community members. In this blog, you will see images from the exhibit and link online details about the various community partners and scholars who were involved in creating the exhibit.
If you would like to read the full Going Public article, join the Labor and Working Class History Association to have access to all the articles published in LABOR. We have reduced rates ($20 annually) for students, independent scholars, adjuncts, and unemployed. The non-discounted annual rate is $50. If you are affiliated with a higher ed institution, you may also be able to access the articles for free through Project Muse on your institution’s library website.
