Organizers of the 2013 Midwest Labor and Working-Class History Colloquium (MLWCH) are soliciting papers of approximately 10 to 25 pages, from any discipline, broadly related to themes of building solidarity and understanding the fragmentation of worker's protest movements. We welcome papers that explore innovative approaches to the practice of working-class history, if you are not sure if your paper will fit, go ahead and submit it! Paper proposals due by December 1, 2012, completed papers by January 18, 2013. Conference will be held at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee on February 15-16, 2013.

We invite papers related to the study of work and working people, labor history, rank-and-file workers, direct action, nonviolence, grassroots organizing, alternative and industrial unionism, labor law, social justice, radicalism, anti-racism, liberation theology and the prison industrial complex. We are interested in work that critiques or suggest new directions for various sub-disciplines related to working-class history, labor scholarship, or historiographies of peoples' struggles; papers that draw upon historical or contemporary movements that have challenged anti-labor policies and practices; those that examine transnational workers' or peoples' struggles; those that draw upon culturally specific or gendered and racialized interactions with capital; and those that analyze working-class artistic expression (visual art, music, etc.). The format of the conference will include moderated breakout discussions in which scholars will interact with one another and provide helpful, collegial suggestions for further development of one another's work. Papers will be grouped into related categories, and will be distributed well in advance of the colloquium, allowing attendees to become familiar with the scholarship of each grouped session. Each presenter will be allowed several minutes to talk about their paper in any manner they deem appropriate, after which the moderator and other group participants will interact with the author to discuss, critique, and make suggestions for further scholastic development.