Every week, AHA Today showcases a new grant, fellowship, or scholarship of interest to historians which has been posted to our free Calendar. This week we are featuring the Herbert Gutman Dissertation Prize from the Labor and Working-Class History Association. 

The Labor and Working-Class History Association (LAWCHA) is pleased to announce its annual Herbert Gutman Dissertation Prize, established in cooperation with the University of Illinois Press. LAWCHA encourages the study of working people, their lives, workplaces, communities, organizations, cultures, activism, and societal contexts. It aims to promote a diverse and cross-cultural understanding of labor and working-class history.  And it encourages innovative, theoretically-informed and interdisciplinary approaches. Transnational and comparative studies are also welcomed.

The dissertation prize is named in honor of the late Herbert G. Gutman, a pioneering labor historian and a founder of the University of Illinois Press’s Working Class in American History Series. LAWCHA hopes that the spirit of Gutman’s inquiry into the many facets of labor and working-class history will live on through this prize.

The winner will receive a cash prize of $750 from LAWCHA along with up to $500 in travel expenses to attend the awards ceremony, and a contract to publish in the Working Class in American History Series. The prize award is contingent upon the author’s acceptance of the contract with the University of Illinois Press.

According to the Working Class in American History editors, the series publishes “research that illuminates the broad dimensions of working people’s influence in North America. We define working-class history capaciously and encourage submissions that explore waged, non-waged, and/or coerced labor, rural and urban settings, and the wide range of labor performed in non-industrial settings, from agriculture to domestic service and beyond. We welcome consideration of the diverse contexts of the lives of those who work, including legal, political, and ideological aspects, as well as parameters of gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, religion, and immigration. As we seek to enhance understanding of pre-industrial and industrializing worlds, we also explore the new challenges that workers face amidst deindustrialization, globalized production, and an expanding service economy. We particularly seek projects that reflect the mobile, international, and diverse nature of capital and labor and apply a transnational or comparative outlook to the study of the working class. We find compelling work that considers the centrality of working people within the history of capitalism.”

Eligible dissertations must be in English and defended in the academic year 2016–17 (September 1, 2016–August 31, 2017). Applicants are not required to be members of LAWCHA at the time of the submission. The winner will be announced at our national conference.

To apply send two copies of the dissertation (one pdf and one in Word.doc format) along with a letter from the dissertation advisor stating the date of the defense by January 1, 2018 to:

James Barrett, Chair
Herbert Gutman Dissertation Prize committee
lawcha@duke.edu 

This post first appeared on AHA Today.