Over the last decade digital humanities has swept through the academy, touching almost every field of inquiry and energizing a number of disciplines. Labor history was an early leader in this initiative, with pioneering digital work by Roy Rosenzweig, James Gregory, and others. In recent years, however, it has lagged somewhat, though there are signs that this is beginning to change. A group of researchers associated with Workplaces: Pasts and Presents, part of the European Labour History Network (ELHN), recently launched several new projects that aim to accelerate our field's move into the digital realm. These include a podcast titled Workplace Matters and a website composed of a series of curated multimedia exhibits that showcase our ongoing research into the history of the workplace, workers movements, and working-class culture (https://workplaces.omeka.net). These initiatives draw on a range of disciplinary methodologies and on the tools provided by digital humanities...
Workplaces: Pasts and Presents Takes the Digital Turn
MARIANA STOLER is a social historian who specializes in the study of labor and unions in the second half of the twentieth century. She holds a PhD in contemporary history from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Her research focuses on Argentinian unions, factories, and workers’ identities in an attempt to understand the processes where subjectivities are built. Currently she is a postdoctoral researcher at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, beneficiary of a grant modality Margarita Salas with funds from the Ministerio de Universidades (Spain), the Plan de Recuperación, Transformación y Resiliencia and the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, doing a research stay at the Departamento de Historia Social y del Pensamiento Político at the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED, Spain).
RICK HALPERN is a social historian whose work has focused on race and labor in a number of national and international contexts. His most recent book, coauthored with Alex Lichtenstein, is Margaret Bourke-White and the Dawn of Apartheid. He has also written about meat and meatpacking, sugar and plantations, and regionalism. Currently he is researching the long interplay between photography, race, and class over the course of the twentieth century. He is the Bissell-Heyd Chair of American Studies at the University of Toronto.
Mariana Stoler, Rick Halpern; Workplaces: Pasts and Presents Takes the Digital Turn. Labor 1 September 2022; 19 (3): 5–7. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/15476715-9794942
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