The 34th Annual North American Labor History Conference (NALHC), being held Oct. 18-20 at Wayne State University’s McGregor Memorial Conference Center, is an interdisciplinary engagement with a broad range of topics under the theme of insurgency and resistance.

The three-day conference will feature keynote addresses, book talks, panels, roundtables, and other events related to this year’s theme. Researchers, union members, activists and students will attend meetings and discussions led by scholars from North America and around the globe. In addition to formal papers, the program includes poetry, film and discussions of labor activism.

Featured keynote speakers include:

Heather Ann Thompson, associate professor, Department of African American Studies, Department of History, Temple University. Thompson is writing the first comprehensive history of the Attica Prison Rebellion of 1971 and its legacy for Pantheon Books. She is also the author of “Whose Detroit: Politics, Labor and Race in a Modern American City,” and has recently published an edited collection, “Speaking Out: Protest and Activism in the 1960s and 1970s,” as well as chapters on crime, punishment and prison activism during the 1960s and 1970s in several edited collections.

Gerald Horne, John and Rebecca Moores Chair of History and African American Studies, University of Houston. His research has addressed issues of racism in labor, politics, civil rights, international relations and war. He also has written extensively about the film industry. Horne is the author of more than 30 books and 100 scholarly articles and reviews.

Among the featured authors presenting their new work on Detroit are:

Beth Bates, professor emerata, Wayne State University, The Making of
Black Detroit in the Age of Henry Ford
    
Chris Rhomberg, associate professor, Fordham University, The Detroit Newspaper     
Strike and the State of American Labor
 
Francis Shor, Wayne State University professor of history and NALHC organizer, says this year’s conference offers an inside look at the labor movement and growing unrest among workers nationally and globally. “The voices of workers and the labor movement have been heard through the uprisings of the past years from Wall Street to Wisconsin, and from Egypt to Greece. The conference theme of insurgency and resistance will reflect those voices and, hopefully, resonate with those attending this major event,” says Shor.

To register, visit http://specialevents.wayne.edu/nalhc-2012. Various pricing and special event options are available.

For further information about the conference, visit http://nalhc.wayne.edu/Home.html, or contact Shor at 313-577-9325 or f.shor@wayne.edu.  

Wayne State University is a premier urban research institution offering more than 370 academic programs through 13 schools and colleges to nearly 29,000 students.