Portuguese American Journal

Call for Papers: Migration and Mill Work Conference – UMass Dartmouth, MA

The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Portuguese Studies and Culture (CPSC) is sponsoring the Migration and Mill Work: Portuguese Communities in Industrial New England Conference to be held on December 3-5, 2017.

Migration and Mill Work is a multi-disciplinary conference providing an overview of migrant mill work through an extended discussion of the settlement and development of the early Portuguese communities in New England. 

The conference will address the waves of migrant laborers in textile and manufacturing mills in Massachusetts and Rhode Island from the late nineteenth century onwards. 

Presentations on topics include: mill town communities and ethnic groups; class and culture in industrial New England; work and living conditions; racialization, categorizations and identities; social histories of the mill communities; life-histories among the working classes; workers’ rights movements; trans-local approaches to migrant trajectories; mill technology and technologies of labor governance; studies of age, gender, labor class, etc. The Portuguese case study will be connected to broader themes in race, ethnicity and labor practices, and will contextualize the political and economic forces confronted by migrant mill wage workers in the period.

The conference will serve as a working meeting for researchers organizing an edited volume on the theme for the project The Color of Labor: the Racialized Lives of Migrants (ERC Advanced Grant). Authors of accepted papers will be invited to participate in the working meetings and may be published in the volume. 

A unique conference program will bring participants on site visits to the Lowell National Historical Park, Boott Mills, the historical replica Slater Mill in Pawtucket, RI and include exhibits, museum talks (New Bedford Whaling Museum), and thematic tours of mill towns and mill neighborhoods, linking research themes to the living history of the communities under consideration. Organizers have issued a call for papers.

The conference is jointly sponsored by Project The Color of Labor: the Racialized Lives of Migrants (ERC Advanced Grant); Institute of Social Sciences, Universidade de Lisboa; Center for Portuguese Studies and Culture & The Ferreira-Mendes Archives, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth; Saab Center for Portuguese Studies, University of Massachusetts Lowell; and Lowell National Historical Park.

Venues include: Lowell National Historical Park, University of Massachusetts Lowell; Ferreira-Mendes Archives, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, with thematic and museum visits in Lowell, Fall River, New Bedford and Slater Mill, Pawtucket.

All accepted papers will be invited to participate in the working meetings and receive an invitation to all conference sponsored meals.  Forward submission abstracts to to Miguel.Moniz@ICS.ULisboa.pt .There are no conference fees.

Source/Press Release:  Center for Portuguese Studies and Culture University of Massachusetts Dartmouth (CPSC)

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