September 3, 2012: Labor Day Special

[In honor of Labor Day I’m taking the day off from blogging—but in the spirit of what this holiday should entail, a genuine effort to remember and engage with the complex and crucial histories of work and the labor movement in this country, here are a handful of past posts where I’ve tried to provide such engagement. Please add your own thoughts on labor, work, and America below!]

What It’s Like: On work, art, and empathy in Rebecca Harding Davis’s novella Life in the Iron-Mills (1861).

 A Human and Yet Holy Day: On Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement.

Workers Write: On the images of young female mill workers in two very different but interestingly complementary 19^th century texts, Herman Melville’s “The Paradise of Bachelors and the Tartarus of Maids” (1855) and The Lowell Offering (1840-1845).

Anarchy in the USA: On the presence and absence of anarchists and revolutionaries in American history in general and social movements like labor in particular.

Public Art: Diego Rivera’s controversial, partially Marxist Rockefeller Center mural was one of the inspirations for this post on the complexities of public art.

Next series starts tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Any texts or histories related to work or the labor movement that you’d highlight? Other thoughts on these themes and questions?

9/3 Memory Day nominees: A tie between two talented, unique, and pioneering American women and writers, Sarah Orne Jewett and Marguerite Higgins.