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UCD Clinton Institute for American Studies

Rethinking Labour: Labour, Affect and Material Culture

Draft Programme 

Friday 18th April

6.15-7.00 pm
REGISTRATION & COFFEE
Registration fee €55
Student registration fee €45

7.00-8.30 pm
PLENARY

Sherry Linkon & John Russo, Co-Directors Youngstown Center for Working-Class Studies, Youngstown State University

‘LEARNING ABOUT LABOUR: A NEW WORKING-CLASS STUDIES PERSPECTIVE’

Saturday 19th April

9.00-10.40 am
PANEL 1 - THE AFFECTIVE IN THE MARKET AND THE MARKET OF AFFECT: LINKING EXPLICIT AND IMPLICIT SITES OF EMOTION
(click here to view paper abstracts for this panel)

Chair: Frank Groome (University College Dublin)

M. Bianet Castellanos, ‘Building Communities of Sentiments:  Money, Emotions, and Decision-Making Among Maya Migrants,’ Department of American Studies, University of Minnesota.

Tracey Deutsch, ‘‘First Catch Your Hare’: Urban Women and Food Procurement, 1880-1930,’ Department of History, University of Minnesota.

Karen Ho, ‘Wall Street’s Downsizing Ethic: Disconnection and the Formation of ‘Men of (and Institutions) of Mettle,’ Department of Anthropology, University of Minnesota.

David Karjanen, ‘Emotional Blackmail and the Labor Process in Transnational Caring Labour Circuits,’ Department of American Studies, University of Minnesota.

Lourdes Gutierrez Najera, ‘Communal Labor and the Construction of Moral Citizenship,’ Departments of Anthropology and Latino Studies, Dartmouth College.

9.20-10.40 am
PANEL 2 - LABOUR, FOOD, EXOTICISM AND WASTE
(click here to view paper abstracts for this panel)

Chair: Madeleine Lyes (University College Dublin)

Aintzane Legarreta Mentxaka, ‘The Gendered World of Professional Cookery in Ireland,’ Independent Scholar, Dublin.

Michelle Renee Ladd, ‘‘With Havana in My Mouth’: The Erotics of Waste in U.S. Cigar Consumption, 1880-1930,’ Department of Liberal Studies, California State University.

Robin Nagle, ‘Status, Stigma, Stink: Sanitation Workers and the Affect of Maligned Labour,’ New York University, Draper Interdisciplinary Master's Program, New York City Department of Sanitation.

10.40-11.00 am
TEA/COFFEE

11.00-12.40 pm
PANEL 3 - GENDER, AFECT AND THE BODY
(click here to view paper abstracts for this panel)

Chair: Marisa Ronan (University College Dublin)

Amy M. Tyson, ‘Men & Muskets, Women & Washing: The Uses of Material Culture in Reproducing Gender at Historic Fort Snelling,’ History Department, DePaul University.

Sue Sheane, ‘Putting on a Good Face: An Examination of the Emotional Side of Body Work and Aesthetic Labour,’ Communication, Carleton University, Ottawa.

David M. Stewart, ‘Walking, Working, Reading,’ Department of English, National Central University, Taiwan.

Valerie Burton, ‘Thoughts Towards an Affective Labouring History of Merchant Seafaring: or, Why Was the Ship a ‘She’? Memorial University, Newfoundland.

11.00-12.40 pm
PANEL  4 - ORAL HISTORIES, COMMUNITY AND FEELING
(click here to view paper abstracts for this panel)

Chair: Kim Sawchuk (Concordia University, Montreal)

Mark Curran, ‘The Breathing Factory: A Globalised Evocation,’ Centre for Transcultural Research and Media Practice, Dublin Institute of Technology.

Laurajane Smith and Gary Campbell, ‘Deindustrailization and the Representation of Labour and Community: The use of ‘Heritage’ in the Reshaping of Community Identity in Castleford West Yorkshire,’ Laurajane Smith: Dept. of Archaeology, University of York, Gary Campbell: Independent Researcher.

John Kirk, ‘Working Through Change: Oral Testimony, Structures of Feeling and the Place of Anecdotes,’ Working Lives Research Institute, London Metropolitan University.

Christine Wall, ‘Workplace Memorabilia and Emotion in Oral Histories of Work,’ Working Lives Research Institute, London Metropolitan University.

12.40-1.40
LUNCH (PROVIDED)

1.45-2.45 pm
PLENARY

Tim Strangleman, Reader in Sociology, School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research, University of Kent

‘IDENTITY, MEANING AND THE REPRESENTATIONS OF LABOUR: RETHINKING ATTACHMENT AND LOSS AT WORK’

2.50-4.30 pm
PANEL 5 - LABOUR, LIFESTYLE AND CREATIVITY
(click here to view paper abstracts for this panel)

Chair: Barry Shanahan (University College Dublin)

Ian Gordon, ‘A Labour of Love: Fans and the Craft of the Mixed Tape,’ Department of History, National University of Singapore.

Kristin Swenson, ‘Affective Rhetoric: Work/Life in the Age of Lifestyle Drugs,’ Communication Studies, Butler University, Indianapolis.

Kirsten Forkert, ‘Taking One's Chances,’ Goldsmiths College, University of London.

Zerrin Arslan, ‘Aeshtetical Dispositions and their Presentation Via Home Decoration in the Turkish Middle Class,’ Sociology Department, Middle East Technical University, Ankara.

 2.50-4.30 pm
PANEL 6 - MANAGING THE SELF: SELF-WORK, TIME AND AESTHETICS  
(click here to view paper abstracts for this panel)

Chair: Karen Ho (University of Minnesota)

Bogdan Costea, Norman Crump, Kostas Amiridis, ‘Managerialism and ‘Infinite Human Resourcefulness’: A Commentary upon the ‘Therapeutic Habitus, ‘Derecognition of Finitude’ and the Modern sense of Self,’ Department of Organisation, Work and Technology, Lancaster University Management School.

Hillary Murtha, ‘It Rings Them Out, it Tolls Them In:’ Bell-Time and its Resonances Among Workers in the New England Textile Industry, 1830-1845,’ University of Delaware.

Alexis McCrossen, ‘Beautiful Little Machines’: U.S. Watches and Bodies in the Gilded Age,’ Department of History, Southern Methodist University, Dallas.

David Gray, ‘Prophets of Motivation: Selling Workplace Cooperation in Motivational Posters,’ Clinton Institute for American Studies, University College Dublin.

 2.50-4.30 pm
PANEL 7 - CRAFT, WORKMANSHIP, PLEASURE AND POWER
(click here to view paper abstracts for this panel)

Chair: Kathryn Nicol (University College Dublin)

Anthony McCann, ‘Crafting Gentleness?’ University of Ulster.

Kate Smith, ‘Shaping and Shaped: The Boundaries of Work in the Late Eighteenth-Century Pottery Industry,’ Department of History, University of Warwick.

Laurence Davis, ‘Pleasurable Labour,’ Independent Scholar, Dublin.

S. Margot Finn, ‘Cooking in Style: Williams-Sonoma and the Must-Have Gourmet Kitchen,’ Program in American Culture, University of Michigan.

4.30-4.50 pm
TEA & COFFEE

4.50-6.30 pm
PANEL 8 - AFFECT, SENTIMENT AND FEELING: EMERGING EPISTEMOLOGIES FOR THINKING ABOUT THE CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC LANDSCAPE
(click here to view paper abstracts for this panel)

Chair: Liam Kennedy (University College Dublin)

Neferti X. M. Tadiar, ‘Vicissitudes of Loss and the Universal Communicability of Feeling Postcolonial,’ Barnard College, Columbia University, New York.

Kalindi Vora, ‘The Biocapital of Care: Commodified Affect and Indian Call Centers,’ University of California Berkeley.

Paula Ioanide, ‘Public Affective Investments in Post-Civil Rights Nativist Measures,’ History of Consciousness Department, University of California, Santa Cruz.

Tamara Lea Spira, ‘Remembering Trauma in a Time of War: the Affective Economies of Neoliberal Amnesia and the Radical Imagination of Dissent,’ History of Consciousness Department, Feminist Studies Department, University of California, Santa Cruz.

4.50-6.30 pm
PANEL 9 - THE ART OF LABOR AND THE LABORING OF ART IN THE MUSEUM, GALLERY AND STUDIO 
(click here to view paper abstracts for this panel)

Chair: Ruth Barton (Trinity College Dublin)

Kim Sawchuk, ‘Effective Communications and Affective Alliances: The Art of Carole Conde and Karl Beveridge,’ Communication Studies, Concordia University, Montreal.

Peter Conlin, ‘Ambiguous Labour: Work in Artist-Run Organizations Affiliation,’ Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture, Concordia University, Montreal.

Frances Pohl, ‘Art, Education and Working Class Culture: The Metropolitan Museum’s Workers’ Education Program,’ Department of Art and Art History, Pomona College, Claremont, California.

Michael Berkowitz, ‘Producing the Image:  Jews, Affect and Commercial Photography,’ Department of Hebrew & Jewish Studies University College London.

6.30-7.30
PLENARY

Andrew Ross, Chair, Department of Social and Cultural Analysis and Professor of American Studies, New York University

‘THE NEW GEOGRAPHY OF WORK’

Sunday 20th April

9.50-11.10
PANEL 10 - CONTESTED LABOURS: VISUAL CULTURE AND WAR
(click here to view paper abstracts for this panel)

Chair: Wendy Ward (University College Dublin)

Derek Nystrom, ‘The Affect of Displaced Labour in The Best Years of Our Lives’
Department of English and Cultural Studies, McGill University, Montreal.

Alanna Thain, ‘Making a Virtual of Necessity: The Work of Melodrama in Brian DePalma’s Redacted and Michel Brault’s Les Ordres,’ Department of English and Cultural Studies, McGill University, Montreal.

Antoine Capet, ‘Ordinary Women’ and ‘Extraordinary Women’ at Work in the Paintings of British Second World War Official Artists,’ British Studies, University of Rouen.

9.50-11.10
PANEL 11 - CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS, CLASS IDENTITY AND MILITANCY
(click here to view paper abstracts for this panel)

Diane Kirkby, ‘‘We Seafarers': Work, Identity and Union Culture Among Australian Seafarers,’ Reader in History, La Trobe University, Melbourne.

John Marsh, ‘Affect, Poetry and the United United Auto Workers,’ Department of English, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Görkem Akgöz, ‘Conceptualizing the Emergence of Working-Class as a Forming and Formative Process: The Case of Turkey in the 1930s and 40s,’ International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam.

11.10-11.30
TEA & COFFEE

11.30-12.30
ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION WITH PLENARY SPEAKERS

CALL FOR PAPERS

April 18th, 19th and 20th, 2008

UCD Clinton Institute of American Studies, University College Dublin

Plenary speakers

Professor Andrew Ross, Chair, Department of Social and Cultural Analysis and Professor of American Studies, New York University

" The New Geography of Work"

Professor Sherry Linkon and Professor John Russo, Co-Directors, Youngstown Center for Working-Class Studies, Youngstown State University

"Learning About Labour: A New Working-Class Studies Perspective"

Dr. Tim Strangleman, Reader in Sociology, School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research, University of Kent

"Identity, Meaning and the Representations of Labour: Rethinking Attachment and Loss at Work"

Recent studies have placed increased emphasis on the affective dimensions of labour. Social scientists, social theorists and historians have explored the ways in which affect shapes social relations, representation and identity in the labour process. At the same time material culture has received renewed attention as an important factor in shaping experience and behavior at work. The purpose of this conference is to explore the historical and contemporary implications of the labour/affect/material culture nexus and to generate discussion of what the “affective turn” holds for our understanding of labour. How are particular forms of affect produced and managed in the factory, the office and service work locations? How does material culture shape habits, dispositions and affective processes in the workplace? How does affect shape identity, performance and authority in particular kinds of work? And how might an analysis of the relationships between affect and material culture inform labour history, the sociology of work, literary studies, aesthetics, social theory, public history and other fields that examine labour?

We invite papers that address any aspect of the historical and contemporary relationship between labour, affect and material culture but especially welcome work that crosses disciplinary borders. Papers are invited on, but are certainly not limited to, the following subjects and areas:

• Class
• Ideology
• Structures of feeling
• Emotions/feelings
• Aesthetics
• Workplace community
• Ethics, conduct and performance
• Visual culture and visuality
• Authority and legitimacy
• Race and ethnicity
• Governmentality
• Literature and literacy
• Gender and Sexuality
• Representation
• Historiography
• Nationalism & Transnationalism
• Identity production
• Policy and economics

Please e-mail abstracts (200-300 words) for 20-minute papers to David.Gray@ucd.ie by February 22nd. We also invite abstracts for panels of 3-4 presenters. In the e-mail, please include the following information:

• Presenter(s) name(s)
• Title of paper(s)
• Institutional affiliation(s)
• Contact information

Questions or further information:

David Gray,
Post-Doctoral Fellow,
Clinton Institute for American Studies,
University College Dublin, Belfield,
Dublin 4
David.Gray@ucd.ie