Education

            University of Pennsylvania, Department of History, Ph.D. (1989)

            University of Wisconsin, Department of History, M.A. (1983)

            University of Pennsylvania, B.A., magna cum laude (1981)

Professional Experience

Dean and Vice-Principal (Academic), University of Toronto Scarborough, 2009-2015

Principal, New College, University of Toronto, 2006-2009

Professor of History and Bissell-Heyd Chair of American Studies, Department of History, University of Toronto, 2001-

Director, Centre for the Study of the United States, Munk Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto, 2004-2006 [Acting Director, 2002-2003; Associate Director, 2001-2002 

Senior Fellow, Massey College, University of Toronto, 2003-

Reader in the History of the United States, Department of History, University College London, England, 1998 – 2001

Lecturer in American History, Department of History, University College London, London, England, 1989 – 1998

         State Historical Society of Wisconsin; United Packinghouse Workers of America Oral History Project, 1985‑1987.

         Researcher and Editorial Advisor, Barbara Kopple/Cabin Creek Center for Work and Environmental Studies, New York, 1987‑1989 

Publications: Books and Edited Collections 

 Margaret Bourke-White and the Dawn of Apartheid in South Africa, co-authored book, University of Indiana Press, 2016.

Inventing Collateral Damage: Civilian Casualties, War, and Empire (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2009).  [co-editor]

Slavery & Emancipation in the American South: A Documentary Reader (Malden MA:cBlackwell Publishers, 2002). [co-editor]

The American South and the Italian Mezzogiorno: Essays in Comparative History (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001/New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002) [co-edited collection]

Racializing Class, Classifying Race: Labour and Difference in Britain, the U.S.A., and Africa (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1999). [co-edited book] 

Empire and Others: The British Encounter with Indigenous Peoples  (London: UCL Press, 1999; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999). [co-edited book]

Down on the Killing Floor: Black and White Workers in Chicago’s Packinghouses, 1904-1954 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997).

Beyond White Supremacy: Towards a New Agenda for the Comparative Histories of South Africa and the United States (London: Institute of Commonwealth Studies, 1997) [co-edited collection, ICS Occasional Papers]

American Exceptionalism?: U.S. Working Class Formation in an International Context (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1997). [co-edited book]

Meatpackers: An Oral History of Black Packinghouse Workers and Their Struggle for Racial and Economic Equality (NY: Twayne, 1996). [co-author] Paperback edition by Monthly Review Press, 1999.

Race and Class in the American South Since 1890 (Oxford and Providence: Berg Publishers, 1994). [edited collection]

Publications: Articles

“The Peculiarities of Race and Violence in US Labor History,” Labor History (Autumn 2010)

“Preface,” Cuba and the World, the World in Cuba, Lorini and Bassosi, eds. (Firenze University Press, 2009).

“Documenting the Louisiana Sugar Economy, 1845-1917: An On-Line Database Project,” Journal of Peasant Studies 35:4 (October 2008).

Documenting Louisiana Sugar, 1845-1917  [with Dr. Richard Follett], database 2008

http://www.sussex.ac.uk/louisianasugar/

“Lessons of the Iran Hostage Crisis,” Munk Centre Monitor, Winter/Spring 2005.

“From Slavery to Freedom in Louisiana’s Sugar Country: Planter Persistence, Changing

Labour Systems, and Workers’ Power” in Sugar, Slavery, and Society, Bernard Moitt, ed.

(University of Florida Press, 2004). 

“Not a Sack of Potatoes: Why Labor Historians Need to Take Agriculture Seriously,”

International Labor and Working Class History 65 (Spring 2004).

“Solving the ‘Labor Problem’: Race, Work, and the State in the Sugar Industries of Louisiana

and Natal, 1870-1910,” Journal of Southern African Studies  30:1 (March 2004).

“Comparing Race and Labor in South Africa and the United States,” Journal of Southern African Studies  30:1 (March 2004).

“Documenting the Louisiana Sugar Economy: An Ongoing Data Project,”Harriet Tubman Resource Centre, http://www.yorku.ca/nhp/dbworkshop/   (2002).

“La schiavitù nella storiagrafia americana: trent’anni di dibattiti,” Ácoma 18 (Summer 2000).

“Getting to Grips with the CIO: The Significance of the Packinghouse Experience,” Labor History  40:2 (May 1999).

“Work, Race, and Identity: Self-Representation in the Narratives of Black Packinghouse Workers,” Oral History Review 26:1 (Winter/Spring 1999).

“Oral History and Labor History: A Historiographic Assessment After Twenty-five Years,” Journal of American History 85:2 (September  1998).

“The CIO and the Limits of Labor-based Civil Rights Activism: The Case of Louisiana’s Sugar Workers, 1947-1966” in Essays in Recent Southern Labor History, Robert H. Zieger, ed. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997).

“The Persistence of Exceptionalism: Class Formation and the Comparative Method” in American Exceptionalism?: U.S. Working Class Formation in an International Context, Rick Halpern and Jonathan Morris, eds. (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1997).

“Respatializing Marxism and Remapping the City,” Journal of Urban History 23:2 (January 1997).

“Race and Radicalism in the Stockyards: The Rise of the Chicago Packinghouse Workers Organizing Committee (PWOC)” in Unionizing “The Jungles”: Essays on Labor and Community in the 20th Century Meatpacking Industry, Shelton Stromquist and Marvin Bergman, eds. (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1997).

“Immigration Policy and the Racialisation of Migrant Labour: The Construction of National Identities in the USA and Britain,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 19:1 (January 1996).

“Organized Labour, Black Workers, and the Twentieth Century South: The Emerging Revision,” Social History 19:3 (October 1994).

“Race, Ethnicity, and Union in the Chicago Stockyards, 1917-22,” International Review of Social History XXXVII (1992); reprinted in Racism and the Labour Market: Historical Studies M. van der Linden and J. Lucassen, eds.(Bern: Peter Lang, 1995).

“The Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove: Welfare Capitalism in Chicago’s Packinghouses, 1921-1933,” Journal of American Studies 26:2 (August 1992).  [reprinted in Major Problems in American History, 1920-1945,  Colin Gordon, ed. (New York:  Houghton Mifflin, 1999)].

“Interracial Unionism in the Southwest: Fort Worth’s Packinghouse Workers, 1936‑1954,” in Organized Labor in the Twentieth Century South, Robert Zieger, ed.(Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1991).