Class Matters: Reflecting on A Half Century of Labor History & Women’s History (Dorothy Sue Cobble)

Name: Class Matters: Reflecting on A Half Century of Labor History & Women’s History (Dorothy Sue Cobble)
Start: 2026-06-19T10:00:00+02:00
Location: Spitalgasse 2, 1090 Wien, Austria

Schedule

Fri, 19 Jun, 2026 at 10:00 am

UTC+02:00

Location

Spitalgasse 2, 1090 Wien, Austria | Wien, WI

Friday, 19 June, 2026 10:00 - 12:00 CEST / Other
Event: Master Class for Interested Researchers
Venue: Campus Hof 2.7, Meeting Room, DSHCS
Reimagining a politics that puts the concerns of working people at its heart is more necessary than ever before. How do the histories of labor and of women over the last half century contribute to this challenge? What are the perils and promises of the return of “class” and the re-embrace of materialist history? Is labor history still in need of being gendered? And, if so, in what ways? What would a more “class conscious” women’s history look like? What can still be learned from the radical histories of the 1960s and 1970s? What should be transcended? I invite you to join me in analyzing the concepts, assumptions, and categories of labor history and women’s history – two academic fields that all-too-often remain at arm’s length -- and in identifying fresh research paths and paradigms for the future. We will base our discussion on three short pieces – E. P. Thompson’s “Preface” to The Making, and two essays of mine on reinvigorating labor history and women’s history.
Dorothy Sue Cobble is Distinguished Professor Emerita of History and Labor Studies at Rutgers University, USA. She is the author of multiple prize-winning books and articles on workers, social movements, and political thought in the US and globally. Recent honors include an Honorary Doctorate of Social Science from Stockholm University in 2017 and election to the Society of American Historians in 2018. Currently, she is co-authoring with Susan Zimmermann a transnational biography of German socialist politician and intellectual Toni Sender and finishing a book of essays on how the far-seeing ideas of labor thinkers of the past can help move us toward a more caring, fairer world. Visit her personal website.
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