Month: April 2025

The Politics of Care Work

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Emma Amador, Author

Duke University Press, 2025

 

In The Politics of Care Work, Emma Amador tells the story of Puerto Rican women’s involvement in political activism for social and economic justice in Puerto Rico and the United States throughout the twentieth century. Amador focuses on the experiences and contributions of Puerto Rican social workers, care workers, and caregivers who fought for the compensation of reproductive labor in society and the establishment of social welfare programs. These activists believed conflicts over social reproduction and care work were themselves high-stakes class struggles for women, migrants, and people of color. In Puerto Rico, they organized for women’s rights, socialism, labor standards, and Puerto Rican independence. They continued this work in the United States by advocating for migrant rights, participating in the civil rights movement, and joining Puerto Rican-led social movements. Amador shows how their relentless efforts gradually shifted the field of social work toward social justice and community-centered activism. The profound and enduring impact of their efforts on Puerto Rican communities underscores the crucial role of Puerto Rican women’s caregiving labor and activism in building and sustaining migrant communities.

Black Movement: African American Urban History since the Great Migration

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Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Editor

The University of North Carolina Press, 2025

 

Description:

The Great Migration of African Americans from the South to northern and western cities between 1915 and 1970 fundamentally altered the political, social, and cultural landscapes of major urban centers like New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Detroit, and changed the country as well. By the late twentieth century, Black people were mayors, police chiefs, and school superintendents, often at parity and sometimes overrepresented in municipal jobs in these and other cities, which were also hubs for Black literature, music, film, and politics.

Since the 1970s, migration patterns have significantly shifted away from the major sites of the Great Migration, where some iconic Black communities have been replaced by mostly non-Black residents. Although many books have examined Black urban experiences in America, this is the first written by historians focusing on the post–Great Migration era. It is centered on numerous facets of Black life, including popular culture, policing, suburbanization, and political organizing across multiple cities. In this landmark volume, Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar and his contributors explore the last half century of African American urban history, covering a landscape transformed since the end of the Great Migration and demonstrating how cities remain dynamic into the twenty-first century.

Contributors are Stefan M. Bradley, Scot Brown, Tatiana M. F. Cruz, Tom Adam Davies, LaShawn Harris, Maurice J. Hobson, Shannon King, Melanie D. Newport, Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Brian Purnell, J. T. Roane, Chanelle Rose, Benjamin H. Saracco, and Fiona Vernal.

David Evans Successfully Defends Dissertation

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On April 2nd, David Evans successfully defended his dissertation, “Hunger for Rights: The Human Right to Food in the Post-War Era”. 

From the abstract: 

In 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed a new era for international law and the expectation of human dignity, and with it the human right to adequate food. This dissertation maps the formulation and evolution of the idea of the right to food. It examines the ways political and religious leaders, internationalists, activists, humanitarians, and scholars imagined, debated, and worked to realize this human right from the 1930s to the 1980s. In its initial formulation, United Nations leaders envisioned the right to food’s realization as the end goal for economic development policy directed at the less developed world. Starting in the 1970s the right to food evolved and different groups embraced it as a framework for addressing global hunger in ways that best matched their political and economic agendas. Political conservatives in the United States rejected human rights policies that required state intervention and instead argued that the right to food would be realized through the economic prosperity and food security generated by free trade. Other advocates operating within the United Nations, along with various religious and secular non-government organizations and scholars, envisioned the right to food as a means to address global inequities and to highlight the political and economic injustices that led to food insecurity. I argue that the right to food evolved from its inception as a component of a broadly understood right to an adequate standard of living, to a fully articulated and fundamental human right that challenged the assumptions and structures of the world economic and political order from which it arose.

 

Congratulations to David Evans on this impressive achievement!

Prof Jeff Ogbar Presents New Book in DC

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Professor Jeffrey Ogbar has edited a path-breaking new book, Black Movement: African-American Urban History Since the Great Migration, and will be presenting it this Monday in Washington, DC.  On Monday evening at 7pm, he will be in conversation about the book with Frederick Knight, Chair of the History Department at Howard University, at the renowned bookstore Politics & Prose.  More details on the event can be found here.

Black Movement includes essays by a wide range of scholars, including Jeff Ogbar, Melanie Newport, and Fiona Vernal from UConn, as well as Stefan M. Bradley, Scot Brown, Tatiana M. F. Cruz, Tom Adam Davies, LaShawn Harris, Maurice J. Hobson, Shannon King, Brian Purnell, J. T. Roane, Chanelle Rose, and Benjamin H. Saracco, It was published this month by the University of North Carolina Press.

Upcoming Lectures from Prof. Manisha Sinha

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Prof. Manisha Sinha will be giving a series of lectures, this April, beginning on April 8 in New Haven, CT. Check out event details below:

April 8, 2025: Bosworth Memorial Lecture in American History, Yale University, New Haven, CT: Link

April 10, 2025: Lecture Sponsored by the History Department and the McFarland Center, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA: Link

April 21, 2025: Hartman Hotz Lecture in Law and Liberal Arts, School of Law and Department of History, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR: Link

Prof Luzzatto to Speak on Primo Levi at U Chicago

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Later this month, Professor Sergio Luzzatto will be delivering the Virgilio Lectures at the University of Chicago, sponsored by the Romance Languages and Literatures Department.  He will be giving three different lectures, on April 16, April 18, and April 22, on “Primo Levi and His Auschwitz Companions: Between History and Literature.” The lectures will draw on his recently published book Primo Levi e i suoi compagni (Donzelli, 2024).  While the lectures will be in Chicago, they can be followed virtually on line as well. Full details can be found on the U Chicago website:  https://events.uchicago.edu/event/246646-virgilio-lecture-series-with-sergio-luzzatto-.

 

Congratulations to Professor Luzzatto on this important new book, and major honor.