The Blackburn College Labor Studies Center
2nd Annual Symposium
The Globalization of Labor: Free Trade in the Americas
February 17 and 18, 2005
Blackburn College
Carlinville, Illinois

Scope of the Symposium:

The Blackburn College Labor Studies Center encourages interdisciplinary study of labor and work. Its members are composed of individuals drawn from a wide variety of disciplines in the Social Sciences and Humanities. The Center supports a minor in Labor Studies, promotes scholarly work in Labor Studies, and sponsors artistic events centering on labor and work.

We encourage interdisciplinary perspectives from graduate students and faculty alike, on all issues relating to the impacts of economic integration in the Americas on labor and work. Economic integration in the western hemisphere involves a complex dynamic of interests and organizations. For example, pro free trade governments and businesses have been successful in creating international trade regimes such as NAFTA, CAFTA, and bilateral agreements such as that between the US and Chile. On the other side, governments have been less supportive of unregulated neoliberalism, labor unions, and other actors in civil society have been successful in gaining voices and in slowing the advance of economic integration as in the recent failure of the FTAA process. Individual laborers and workers, along with their communities and cultures, are affected in many ways by the forces of integration and the organized social and political responses to integration. We invite scholarly papers focusing on any of the following or related topics. Presenters might focus on any of the following or related topics.

- Economic costs and benefits of globalization
- The history of workers’ movements
- Literary studies of work
- International and national governmental responses to labor rights and unionization
- Impacts of free trade agreements on workers
- Conflicts between globalization and traditional cultural values relating to work
- The effects of immigration on local labor markets
- Relationships between labor, gender, race and/or ethnicity
Please send a one-page letter of interest and a one page abstract by November 30, 2005 to:

Dr. Jan Zimmerman
Blackburn College
Dept. of History
700 College Avenue
Carlinville, IL 62626
(217) 854-3231 ext.4308
jzimm@blackburn.edu

or

Dr. Mike Bradley
Dept. of Political Science
Blackburn College
700 College Avenue
Carlinville, IL 62626
217-854-3231 ext.
mbrad@blackburn.edu