Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
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Item The Purpose of a Labor Theatre: Industrial Democracy and the Union Theatre of Detroit, 1946-1949(2024) Lapinski, Margaret; Hildy, Franklin J.; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In 1946, the Union Theatre of Detroit was established as a project to broadcast “labor’s” aims and achievements. Sponsored by the Educational and Recreational Departments of the UAW, the Union Theatre quickly became part of the UAW’s educational programming to help educate and politicize workers on social issues like racial discrimination. This thesis seeks to investigate the ways in which the Union Theatre labored on behalf of an industrial democratic political program that emphasized deploying both economic and political action to achieve the goals of “labor.” In addition to providing a brief history of the Union Theatre, I use methods from performance studies and theatre studies to analyze archival material and decipher the ways in which plays functioned as both recreational activities and educational opportunities for union members to rehearse the tactics and strategies of labor organizing. I argue that, post-WWII, theatre and theatricality (loosely defined as the conventions of theatre) were deployed as an organizing tool to agitate and educate union members during a period of theatre history that is characterized in theatre historiography as “politically apathetic.” In this thesis, I ask “What was the social link between the Union Theatre and institutions like the UAW?” and seek to uncover how cultural work labors in broader social and political movements like the American labor movement.Item "Foreboding Circumstances": U.S. Labor Intervention and the Chilean Labor Movement during the Cold War, 1964-1973(2024) Gutmann Fuentes, Andrea Nicole; Rosemblatt, Karin A.; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Recent scholarship in Cold War and transnational labor history has examined the role played by U.S. organized labor in neutralizing left-wing labor movements around the world, contributing to U.S. State Department goals of anti-communist containment in the Third World. Research from both within and outside the academy has examined how the AFL-CIO, operating primary through the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), acted to undermine the socialist Unidad Popular government in Chile, helping to set the stage for the U.S.-backed coup d’etat on September 11, 1973. However, this scholarship has suffered from a relative lack of Chilean primary source material and a failure to ground historical analyses in the local Chilean context. This has impeded a full view of how the AFL-CIO’s labor intervention project unfolded in Chile, how it was perceived and responded to by Chileans, and the extent to which it was ultimately successful. This thesis makes use of Chilean national press, books, and trade union and left-wing media, in addition to new source material pulled from the U.S. State Department and the AFL-CIO archives, to assess the successes and failures of the AFL-CIO’s labor intervention project in Chile. The thesis demonstrates that while the AFL-CIO failed to accomplish many of its concrete goals in Chile due to overwhelming opposition to its project among Chilean labor, the AFL-CIO’s relationship with particular sectors of the Chilean labor movement effectively advanced a more general political goal of fomenting labor opposition from labor in strategic sectors of the economy to undermine the Unidad Popular government, thereby contributing to the success of the 1973 coup. By examining AFL-CIO’s complicated and paradoxical relationship with the centrist Christian Democratic Party, this thesis argues that the vast majority of Chilean workers from a broad array of ideological tendencies rejected the AFL-CIO’s promotion of “free trade unionism,” an explicitly anti-communist ideology advocating that workers reject a politics of class struggle in favor of class harmony between labor and management. This thesis then demonstrates that the AFL-CIO encouraged and validated the decision of some conservative labor leaders in the stevedore labor movement to ultimately join the anti-Allende opposition. Under the intensely polarized political context of early 1970s Chile, in which conservative labor leaders faced social and political pressures to move leftward with the majority of the labor movement and to support the Unidad Popular, the decision of these labor leaders to join the right-wing opposition with support from the AFL-CIO was a significant event contributing to the 1973 coup.Item Resistance in the Digital Workplace: Call Center Workers in Bell Telephone Companies, 1965-2005(2021) Goldman, Debbie J; Greene, Julie; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Resistance in the Digital Workplace analyzes the ways in which a predominantly female unionized workforce contested the degradation of the labor process and downward pressure on living standards and job security in the automated call centers of two leading telecommunications companies, AT&T and Bell Atlantic (now Verizon) in the latter decades of the twentieth century. In their struggles with employers, the call center workers and their union, the Communications Workers of America (CWA), fought for good, secure, humane jobs amidst the digital revolution, neoliberal policy regime, the financial turn in capitalism, and the decline of unions. The study argues that the very forces that were driving change in the call centers also shifted and frequently narrowed the terrain upon which these call center workers struggled with management for control and power. While CWA and its call center members scored impressive victories in placing limits on abusive surveillance, work speed-up, and some forms of outsourcing, the study also demonstrates the boundaries of collective worker power in the highly automated call center environment. Resistance in the Digital Workplace examines key questions of labor history: workers’ struggles for job control in automated workplaces; the opportunities and constraints of the U.S. enterprise-based collective bargaining system; the failure of U.S. labor law to protect workers when organizing; alternative organizing models such as CWA’s bargain to organize strategy; the impact of neoliberal regulatory and economic policies on the decline of union power; the rise and fall of labor-management partnerships in the 1990s; the financial turn in capitalism; the fissuring of employment systems; global outsourcing of service work; and the successful strike against the corporate giant Verizon in the year 2000. The contests of CWA and its call center members, operating in one of the most dynamic and important sectors of the U.S. and global economy, highlight the opportunities, challenges, and constraints that so many U.S. service workers face in their struggles for power in the post-industrial service economy.Item More Than the 'Physical Remains of Yesterday's Industry:' A Case Study of the Clayton Cotton Mill(2021) McCoy, Abigail; Palus, Matthew M.; Anthropology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The historic Clayton Cotton Mill located in Clayton, North Carolina, operated from the early- to mid-twentieth century. This research investigates the quality and quantity of data that is recovered from twentieth century industrial sites when investigators utilize the methodologies and research interests of labor archaeology. It also examines how labor archaeology informs questions relating to race, paternalism, and child labor, and how labor archaeology’s methodologies highlight the potential public value of the resource.The initial archaeological investigations conducted at this mill were focused on traditional industrial archaeology research questions and concluded that the resource was not eligible for listing on the NRHP without considering research avenues associated with labor archaeology. The goal of this project is to evaluate this resource through the lens of labor archaeology, identifying valuable information that adds to a more complete understanding of the resource and would have been lost if the original recommendation was accepted.Item Cultivating Politics: The Formation of a Black Body Politic in the Postemancipation Louisiana Sugar Parishes(2018) Calhoun, John; Bonner, Christopher; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The capture of New Orleans by Union forces in 1862 led to the emancipation of thousands of slaves across Louisiana’s sugar parishes. This early emancipation preceded the abolition of slavery elsewhere in the South, and it held far-reaching implications for the freedpeople of the sugar parishes. In this thesis, I argue that early emancipation fostered the rise of a powerful black body politic in the sugar parishes that would endure throughout Reconstruction and beyond. This body politic aimed to protect black people’s unique conception of freedom as both white Southerners and white Northerners endeavored to circumscribe that freedom for their own purposes. In pursuit of this goal, the mobilized sugar workers employed a broad range of political tools, ranging from extralegal violence to labor organization. These methods proved effective and safeguarded the freedom of black sugar workers for decades after the Civil War despite attempts by both Democrats and Radical Republicans to dissolve and demarcate that freedom respectively.Item SEX AND SOLIDARITY: CLASS AND GENDER IN THE KNIGHTS OF LABOR AND THE INDUSTRIAL WORKERS OF THE WORLD(2017) McVey, Julie; Greene, Julie M; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This work examines women’s involvement in the Knights of Labor in the late nineteenth century and the Industrial Workers of the World in the early twentieth century. Through analyzing each organization’s perspective on working-class women, the lives and writings of their most prominent female leaders, and the interactions female leaders had with the rank and file women, this thesis aims to show that the KOL and IWW respectively held conflicting ideas about women members based on their class ideologies and shifting gender structures during a time of great change in American society.Item “FOR THE UNION MAKES US STRONG”: PROTEST MUSIC IN THE 1989−90 PITTSTON STRIKE(2016) Rogers, Alice Esther; Rios, Fernando; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Music making was a common practice during the 1989−90 strike against the Pittston Coal Company, an action led by the United Mine Workers of America. The types of music made varied greatly based on the contexts in which musicians and protesters were participating. In this thesis, I discuss how performers and audiences engaged with the music of the Pittston strike, with a focus on how different participatory and presentational contexts included music with similar or the same lyrics to achieve different goals. I argue that the musicians’ understanding of the people around them as potential participants, audiences, or inherent audiences shifted their use of music as they worked to use music strategically and effectively for the strike. The musical methods and considerations of the Pittston strike protesters have had a lasting impact on more recent protest movements.Item The personnel system of the foreign service of the United States; an analysis and evaluation of the Foreign Service Officer Corps(1952) Moser, Martin William; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)Item MIGRATION, MODERNITY AND MEMORY: THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY IN A NORTHEAST PENNSYLVANIA COAL COMPANY TOWN, 1897-2014(2015) Roller, Michael Peter; Shackel, Paul A; Anthropology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The Lattimer Massacre occurred in September of 1897 in the anthracite coal region of Pennsylvania. It has been described as the bloodiest massacre of the nineteenth century. In this event, a company-sponsored sheriff and a posse of local businessmen shot into a crowd of striking Eastern European mine laborers, resulting in the deaths of at least nineteen. However, the great significance of the event is not in the body count but the material contexts of its occurrence as well as its pre- and post- histories. Moreover, while the event can be securely consigned to history, the capitalist processes punctuated by this instance of violence are present throughout the century since its occurrence. In the region, coal company towns materialized carefully maintained racialized labor hierarchies in which new immigrants were confined to shanty towns at the periphery. The dissertation operates on an archaeological scale stretched across the longue durée of the twentieth century, documenting the transformation of a shanty town into an American suburb over the course of a century. The archaeological evidence hails from three excavations including a survey of the site of the Massacre and excavations of lots in the shanty enclave. This dissertation examines the trajectory of these settlements across the entire span of the twentieth century. With its primary evidence derived from waste, ruins, surpluses and redundancies accumulated over time, archaeological tellings of history recognize these aspects not simply for their contingency, but their centrality within capitalist social life across the passage of time. In this dissertation, I propose that a critical historical archaeology can contribute substantially to a nuanced understanding of the ironic developments of late twentieth century political economy. Contradiction, sovereignty, governmentality, states of exception, surplus enjoyment, cycles of creative destruction and reterritorialization, renewal, and subjectivation are explored by juxtaposing, grafting and merging archaeological evidence with social theory, textual evidence, ethnographic data and interdisciplinary scholarship to present an archaeological history greater than the sum of its parts. The result is both a history of the community and a schematic for an archaeological history of the twentieth century.Item Knocking on Labor's Door: Union Organizing and the Origins of the New Economic Divide (1968-1985)(2015) Windham, Anna Lane; Greene, Julie M; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)ABSTRACT Title of dissertation: KNOCKING ON LABOR'S DOOR: UNION ORGANIZING AND THE ORIGINS OF THE NEW ECONOMIC DIVIDE (1968-1985) Anna Lane Windham, Doctor of Philosophy, 2015 Dissertation directed by: Professor Julie Greene, Department of History The 1970s were a pivotal decade for the creation of twenty-first century economic inequality, and the loss of union power was one important driver away from shared U.S. prosperity. Yet why did U.S. labor grow so weak? Much recent scholarship shifts blame for labor's decline to unions and the working class, and asserts that private-sector workers were simply no longer trying to organize by the mid-1970s. The dissertation instead paints the 1970s as a decade of working-class promise and reveals a previously-unstudied wave of half a million workers a year who tried to form unions in the private sector. Many of these workers were the women and people of color who had long been excluded from the nation's best jobs and from some unions, yet who had recently gained new access through Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Once these workers got the coveted jobs, many went knocking on labor's door. This dissertation explains how after World War II union organizing became the narrow door through which workers could access the most secure tier of the U.S. employer-provided social welfare system: collective bargaining. Increased resistance to union organizing among employers by the 1970s, however, thwarted these workers' organizing attempts. When fewer workers could access unions, the stage was set for growing economic precarity and inequality. This dissertation features four case studies: the largest union election ever in the South which was among Newport News, Virginia shipyard workers in 1978; campaigns in 1974 and 1985 by Cannon Mills textile workers in Kannapolis, North Carolina; the 1979 campaign among 5300 department store at Woodward & Lothrop in Washington, DC; and the women office workers' group "9to5" in Boston who forged a new kind of labor organizing. Sources include government statistics, oral history, local and national union records, business organization archives, polling, periodicals and previously unexamined anti-union consultant records.