My project “Creating Norma Rae: The Erasure of Puerto Rican Needleworkers and Southern Labor Activists in a Neoliberal Icon” received the Lerner-Scott Prize for the best doctoral dissertation in U.S. women’s history. The prize committee described it as “a stunningly successful combination of original scholarship, compelling prose, and sophisticated argumentation.” I am so appreciative for all the scholars, librarians, archivists, and friends who supported, guided, and advised me on this project. And I am so appreciative for all the people who have developed and enriched the field of U.S. women’s history.

The post 2020 April: Lerner-Scott Prize, Organization of American Historians first appeared on Aimee Loiselle.

A chance conversation with a colleague led to the realization that Puerto Rican women migrated to the Northeast in the 1960s and 1970s for jobs in old textile and garment factories. That evidence contradicts the dominant historical narrative of the industry “dying” in New England as it relocated in one direction, southward. Puerto Rican women were one interconnected if not interchangeable labor market critical to how a complex global working class coalesced. Documents and oral histories of white and Puerto Rican women workers have been collected in distinct archives, leading to misconceptions about the industry and the development of capitalism. In order to explore such historical relationships, scholars have to acknowledge their specific positionality, the bounded “field of visibility” for their specialty. They can then search for links across archives that have been “disjunctured” by colonial practices or constrained by formal practices of organizing knowledge. Both the Dodd Center at UConn and the Connecticut Historical Society have collections for these women workers that historians can approach in this way.

The post 2018 May: “Fragmented Archives: Northeastern Millworkers and Puerto Rican Needleworkers in the Same Industry, Different Collections,” Association for the Study of Connecticut History first appeared on Aimee Loiselle.

Presented my paper, “Working the Exemptions: Puerto Rican Needleworkers, Pliable Citizenship, and a Scaffolding for Neoliberalism.”  An outstanding event that brought together scholars from wide-ranging fields, union leaders, worker activists, and adjunct/contingent faculty organizers.

The post 2017 June: “Working the Exemptions: Puerto Rican Needleworkers, Pliable Citizenship, and a Scaffolding for Neoliberalism,” LAWCHA, University of Washington first appeared on Aimee Loiselle.

“Experiments in Citizenship, Migration, and Labor Recruitment: Puerto Rican Needleworkers and a Deep History of Neoliberalism”

Mobility & Marginalization, Graduate History Conference, UMass Amherst, March 2017

The post 2017 March: Outstanding Paper, “Experiments in Citizenship, Migration, and Labor Recruitment: Puerto Rican Needleworkers and a Deep History of Neoliberalism,” Graduate History Conference, UMass Amherst first appeared on Aimee Loiselle.

The post 2017 April: “A Laboratory for Neoliberalism: Puerto Rican Needleworkers, Flexible Labor Markets, and Rationales for Exemptions and Incentives,” Center for Latin American, Caribbean and Latino Studies Conference, UMass Amherst first appeared on Aimee Loiselle.

“Sovereignty, Citizenship, and Labor: Puerto Rican Needleworkers and a Deep History of Neoliberalism”

The Public-Private Divide, American Political History Institute Graduate Conference, Boston University, March 2017

The post 2017 March: Outstanding Paper, “Sovereignty, Citizenship, and Labor: Puerto Rican Needleworkers and a Deep History of Neoliberalism,” Graduate Conference, Boston University first appeared on Aimee Loiselle.