Author: Stockford, Lillian

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have significantly shifted away from the major sites of the Great Migration, where some iconic Black communities have been replaced by mostly non-Black residents.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 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.

Alexis Dudden Article about Firebombing of Tokyo Published in Economist

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Earlier this month, Alexis Dudden‘s article, “Alexis Dudden on the Firebombing of Tokyo and on Post-war Struggles to Keep it Remembered,” was published in The Economist. The article tackles the topic of the air raids in Japan of World War II, and the efforts to remember the civilians who were injured, perished, and made homeless by the bombings.

To read the article in The Economist: Article

To read the PDF version: Article

In Memoriam: Shirley Ardis Abbott

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The History Department mourns the loss of Shirley Ardis Abbott, who passed away last month. The longtime director of the Vernon Historical Museum, she earned her PhD in the Department in 1997.  Her dissertation “Building the Loom City: Rockville, Connecticut, 1821-1908” was later published as a book.  Her obituary offers a sense of the rich life she lived: https://www.courant.com/obituaries/shirley-ardis-abbott/

“My Story, Our Future” Exhibit Celebrates South Asian Youth Voices

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Earlier this month, the “My Story, Our Future” exhibit opened at the Greenwich Historical Society. The exhibit, which will run from February 3rd to March 2nd, was a joint effort on the part of the Greenwich Historical Society, the India Cultural Centers, and the UConn Asian and Asian American Studies Institute. This is the program’s third year running, and was created “in alignment with Connecticut’s mandated K-12 Asian American/Pacific Islander (AAPI) curriculum”. The goal of this initiative is to bring focus onto the voices of South Asian American youth in Connecticut through the collection of their stories, and explore the history of the South Asian American community in Connecticut. For this years exhibit, local students interviewed their family members about their experiences immigrating to North America from South Asia, and then learned how to create their own display of curated objects to help tell that history.

Dr. Jason Oliver Chang, who was a main proponent of the creation of the initiative and of the inclusion of AAPI curriculum in schools, spoke at the opening of the exhibit. Professor Chang “shared his experiences as faculty mentor and guide and spoke of the challenges and opportunities of introducing the AAPI curriculum to the state’s 170 school districts and to the teachers who have not previously studied it“.

The exhibit will be open to the public until March 2nd at the Greenwich Historical Society. To listen to the oral histories, you can visit the historical society’s website, where there is a link to their Spotify.

Manisha Sinha is Speaker for Joanna Dunlap Cowden Memorial Lecture

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This Thursday, Professor Manisha Sinha will be presenting her talk, “The Fall of the Second American Republic” as speaker for the Joanna Dunlap Cowden Memorial Lecture. The event will take place at California State University Chico at 5:30 pm. The talk will draw from her book, The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruction, 1860-1920.

The memorial lecture was established in 2001 to honor the legacy and work of Professor Joanna Dunlap Cowden, a history professor who taught at California State University Chico for 25 years. Professor Cowden’s work focused on United States antebellum and Civil War history.

Deirdre Cooper Owens Named Scholar In Residence at Occidental College

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Professor Deirdre Cooper Owens has been named the Stafford Ellison Wright Black Alumni Scholar-in-Residence at Occidental College in Los Angeles California. This awaAssociate professor of history, Deidre Cooper Owensrd is funded by the Stafford Ellison Wright Endowment, created by the Black Alumni Organization in honor of the college’s first black graduates, Dr. Janet Stafford, George F. Ellison, and Barbara Bowman Wright. Through this program, Occidental College is able to invite, “distinguished Black scholars, artists, elected officials, and others to spend time in residence at Occidental each year.“

Dr. Cooper Owens will be in residence between February 18th and 19th, 2025, visiting talking with students, as well as holding a healing circle on February 19th. On the 18th at 7pm, she will also present, “Slavery, Gynecology and Black Placental Resistance: Why Black Mothers Matter“, a free public lecture.

 

 

To read more about this impressive achievement: Occidental College