Doing Labor History

How do historians access lives of the laboring poor in the past? What is the archive of the working-class life? Toiling in farms, plantations, workshops, mines, factories, brothels and households, workers seldom leave behind an account of their lives in their own words. How have labor historians devised methods and techniques of reading traces from the past of those who were on the margins of society and struggling for their survival, and dignity? In this undergraduate colloquium, we will engage with these questions, particularly through the historical scholarship on workers in the Global South. This course will provide an introduction to the history of the field of labor history across different parts of the world; discuss the tremendous influence of the historian E.P. Thompson in the shaping of the field; explore how studies of gender, race, caste, cultural identities, and of a global perspective, have transformed the field in profound ways; and how the modern world was built on the foundation of oppressive regimes of labor extraction such as slavery, indenture, and wage labor.