Metropolitan History Workshop--University of Michigan

Organizer: Matt Lassiter

 

The Metropolitan History Workshop is an initiative to bring scholars who work in the areas of metropolitan (urban and suburban) studies, public policy, political history, race and ethnicity, and other related fields to the University of Michigan.  Sponsored events will include book workshops and panel discussions designed for graduate students as well as public lectures by visiting scholars open to the campus community.

The Metropolitan History Workshop has received funding from the University of Michigan covering the 2005-2011 academic years, with special thanks to the College of Literature, Science and the Arts, the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies, and the Institute for Historical Studies of the History Department.  The planning committee for the workshop includes Prof. Matt Lassiter of History and Urban Planning, Prof. Matthew Countryman of History and American Culture, and Prof. Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof of History, American Culture, and Latino Studies.

The workshop is in part an outgrowth of the Michigan Colloquium on Race and Twentieth-Century American Political Development, a lecture and workshop series during the 2002-03 academic year.  Many of the speakers also appear on the syllabus of History 688: Urban Crisis/Suburban Nation.

Graduate students interested in joining the metro history listserv should email Matt Lassiter at mlassite@umich.edu.

 

Events in Fall 2009

Sept. 25, 2009: Jefferson Cowie (Cornell University) will be giving a public lecture, Stayin' Alive: The Seventies and the Last Days of the Working Class.  He will also be conducting a workshop for graduate students on his book Capital Moves: RCA's Seventy-Year Quest for Cheap Labor.

Oct. 16, 2009: Anthony Chen (University of Michigan) will be conducting a workshop for graduate students on his book The Fifth Freedom: Jobs, Politics, and Civil Rights in the United States, 1941-1972.

Nov. 6, 2009: Darren Dochuk (Purdue University) and Michelle Nickerson (University of Texas-Dallas) will be on a roundtable previewing their forthcoming anthology Sunbelt Rising: The Politics of Space, Place, and Region in the American South and Southwest.  Dochuk and Nickerson will also conduct a separate workshop with graduate students.

Nov. 13, 2009: Bryant Simon (Temple University) will be giving a public lecture drawn from his new book, Everything but the Coffee: Learning about America from Starbucks.  He will also be conducting a workshop for graduate students on his book Boardwalk of Dreams: Atlantic City and the Fate of Urban America.

 

Events in Fall 2008/Winter 2009

           Special theme year focusing on Latino history and Latin American Studies, cosponsored by Latin American and Caribbean Studies.

 

Events in Winter 2008

           March 21: 2008: Roundtable on The Black Middle Class: The Politics of Race and Class in Cities and Suburbs, featuring Mary Pattillo (Northwestern University), author of Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City (Chicago).  Responses by Karyn Lacy (University of Michigan), author of Blue-Chip Black: Race, Class, and Status in the New Black Middle Class (California) and Angela Dillard, author of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner Now? Multicultural Conservatism in America (NYU).

 

Events in Fall 2007

           Sept. 14, 2007: Margaret O'Mara (University of Washington/Stanford University) will be giving a public lecture: Landscapes of Knowledge: History and the High-Tech Suburb, from the Bay Area to Bangalore.  She also will be conducting a workshop for graduate students on her book Cities of Knowledge: Cold War Science and the Search for the Next Silicon Valley (Princeton).

           Sept. 28, 2007: Alison Isenberg (Rutgers University) will be giving a public lecture: Saving the City for Whom?  Gender, Race, and Redevelopment in the Twentieth Century.  She also will be conducting a workshop for graduate students on her book Downtown America: A History of the Place and the People Who Made It (Chicago).

           Nov. 9, 2007: David Freund (University of Maryland) will be giving a lecture: What Makes a Place Suburban?  Excluding 'Undesirables' in Postwar Metropolitan Detroit, and also conducting a workshop for graduate students on his book Colored Property: State Policy and White Racial Politics in Suburban America (Chicago).

           Nov. 15-16, 2007: Rhonda Williams (Case Western Reserve University) will be giving a Public Lecture on the War on Drugs in Baltimore and participating in a Panel Discussion about Conducting Oral History Interviews in Marginalized Communities.  She is the author of The Politics of Public Housing: Black Women's Struggles against Urban Inequality (Oxford).

           Dec. 7, 2007: Howard Gillette (Rutgers University) will be participating in a roundtable discussion: Cities after the Fall: Decline and Renewal in Post-Industrial Cities.  He also will conduct a workshop for graduate students on his book Camden after the Fall: Decline and Renewal in a Post-Industrial City (Pennsylvania).

 

Events in Winter 2007.

           March 16, 2007: Meg Jacobs (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) will conduct a workshop based on her book-in-progress, Hard Right: How Conservatives Used the Energy Crisis to Start a Revolution.

           April 13, 2007: Adam Rome (Pennsylvania State University) will conduct a Workshop on Urban History and Environmental History, based on his book-in-progress, New City, New Country: Environmental Reform and the Emergence of Modern America.

 

Events in Summer/Fall 2006

           Nov. 3, 2006: Felicia Kornbluh (Duke University) will give a Public Lecture and conduct a graduate student workshop about her forthcoming book, The Rise and Fall of Welfare Rights: Gender, Law, and Poverty in Postwar America (Univ. of Pennsylvania Press).

           Sept. 21, 2006: Heather Thompson (UNC-Charlotte) will give a Thursday Public Lecture drawn from her book-in-progress, Attica: Race, Rebellion, and the Rise of Law and Order America. 

           Sept. 22, 2006: Friday Roundtable: The New Black Power Studies with Komozi Woodard (Sarah Lawrence College), Jeanne Theoharis (Brooklyn College), and Heather Thompson (UNC-Charlotte).  Komozi Woodard will also be conducting a Friday morning workshop for graduate students on his book A Nation within a Nation: Amiri Baraka (Leroi Jones) and Black Power Politics. 

           July 21, 2006: Workshop for graduate students with Matthew Countryman (University of Michigan), author of Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia (Pennsylvania, 2005).

 

Events in Winter 2006

March 17, 2006: Eric Avila (UCLA) will be giving a public lecture: San Diego's Chicano Park: A Barrio's Confrontation with Modernity under the Freeway.  He will also be conducting a workshop with graduate students about his new book Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles (California, 2004).

Feb. 17, 2006: Rick Perlstein (author of Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus) will be conducting a public workshop on Writing for the Popular Press and a Workshop on Nixonland: The Politics and Culture of the American Berserk, his book-in-progress.

           Feb. 2-3, 2006: Roundtable on Immigration History since 1965, with David Reimers (New York University) and Jesse Hoffnung-Garskof (University of Michigan).  David Reimers will also give a public lecture: Immigration: A Never-Ending Debate.

 

Events in 2005 

Dec. 2, 2005: Workshop for graduate students with Andrew Wiese (San Diego State University), author of Places of Their Own: African American Suburbanization in the Twentieth Century (Chicago, 2004).  Andrew Wiese will also give a public lecture, The House I Live In: Race, Class, and African American Suburbanization in the Postwar U.S., that is drawn from his book.

 

Nov. 11, 2005: Workshop for graduate students with Bryant Simon (Temple University), author of Boardwalk of Dreams: Atlantic City and the Fate of Urban America (Oxford, 2004).  Bryant Simon will also participate in a Roundtable Discussion from 4-6 pm on Nov. 10, 2005, in an event co-sponsored by the Institute for Historical Studies.

 

Sept. 30, 2005: Workshop for graduate students with Robert Self (Brown University), author of American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar Oakland (Princeton, 2003).  Robert Self will also give a public lecture drawn from his new research: Sex and the City: The Erotic Landscape of the U.S. Urban Crisis, 1960-1990s.

 

May 17, 2005: Roundtable on Southern Politics and the Transformation of American Conservatism, with Kevin Kruse (Princeton University), author of White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism (Princeton, 2005), and Joseph Crespino (Emory University), author of The Last Days of Jim Crow: Desegregation and the Evolution of Southern Conservatism (Princeton, forthcoming).

 

Previous visitors through the Michigan Colloquium on Race and Twentieth-Century American Political Development (2003-05)

 

1.  MARGARET WEIR: "STATES, RACE, AND THE DECLINE OF NEW DEAL LIBERALISM" (October 2, 2003)

 

2. THOMAS SUGRUE: "JIM CROW'S LAST STAND: THE STRUGGLE FOR CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE SUBURBAN NORTH" (Oct. 16, 2003)

 

3. LIZABETH COHEN: "THE RACIAL POLITICS OF MASS CONSUMPTION IN THE CONSUMERS' REPUBLIC" (Nov. 7, 2003)

 

4. MICHAEL KATZ: "THE NEW AFRICAN-AMERICAN INEQUALITY" (Dec. 11, 2003)

 

5. MAE NGAI: "IMPOSSIBLE SUBJECTS: ILLEGAL ALIENS AND THE MAKING OF MODERN AMERICA" (Feb. 5, 2004)

 

6. AMY BRIDGES: "MANAGING THE PERIPHERY: CONSTITUTIONS AND RACIAL ORDER IN THE AMERICAN WEST" (April 1, 2004)

 

7. NANCY MACLEAN: "ARE MEXICAN AMERICANS 'WHITES OR PEOPLE OF COLOR'?  THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF MEXICAN AMERICAN POLITICS" (March 25, 2005)