The journal of International Labor and Working Class History (ILWCH) is inviting submissions for a special issue focusing on ‘Ancient Labor Histories’, under the editorial supervision of Joseph Howley (Columbia University) and Jordan Rogers (North Carolina State University).
We are especially interested in examining how histories of labor might serve as a framework for a global understanding of antiquity, particularly through the varied institutions of coerced labor that developed across the world in this period. In the spirit of this approach, the editors invite submissions from labor historians of any region of the world, with a general temporal focus on the last two millennia BCE and the first millennium CE, with exact timing of ‘the ancient’ dependent upon local circumstances.
Possible topics of consideration might be:
-Competing discourses and representations of labor/work in different media;
-The development (or not) of identities relative to labor and their intersection with other status identities, e.g. class, gender, race, etc.;
-Ideas and value systems of craft and skill as they develop in relation to labor configurations and practices;
-The role of institutions (e.g. slavery, religion, etc.) in structuring labor;
-Comparative approaches examining shifts in labor relations within society;
-How labor organizing manifests in the historical record, and its impacts on society;
-To what extent modern categories of historical analysis (e.g. labor unions, guilds, strike, etc.) are useful for reconstructing ancient labor relations;
-The importance (or not) of labor as a uniting methodology for a new ‘global antiquity’, or history writ large
We welcome the submission of traditional scholarly articles (ca. 8000 words, including footnotes) representing any geographical area in antiquity; we especially encourage submissions from areas outside of the Mediterranean and Mesopotamia.
For those interested, please submit an abstract (up to 500 words), along with institutional email and affiliation, to both editors by Oct 1, 2026. Please include in the subject line of your submission email, “Ancient Labor History Special Issue Abstract”. Authors invited to submit an article for peer review will be asked to submit a full manuscript by June 1, 2027. The issue is scheduled to be published in Fall 2028.
All communications and questions should indicate their connection to the “Ancient Labor Histories” special issue and be addressed to:
Jordan Rogers (jrroger7@ncsu.edu)
Joseph Howley (jah2220@columbia.edu)