2020 April: Lerner-Scott Prize, Organization of American Historians 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…
2020 October: Commentary for The Hill, Mother Jones Biography A reporter for The Hill, a news website based in Washington, D.C., that serves readers interested in federal government and national issues, contacted me for commentary on the labor activist Mother Jones. The piece is part of its Century…
The fires in the Amazon throughout Brazil and Bolivia reveal the inability of environmental activists, climate change organizations, and worker groups to forge effective alliances. Most of these fires started around logging, mining, and ranching operations—big money industries that extract billions in natural resources. Their imperative is to…
Most mainland non-Caribbean folks do not understand the recent events in Puerto Rico.* Some of this lack of understanding arises from decades of decisions in the U.S. federal government to not include colonies in daily press releases and major policy proclamations. In dozens of…
You know who really matters in all the regular controversies that Nike stirs up around its sneakers. (Its advertising and marketing division has been perfecting these tactics since the 1970s.) The Asian women who work in the factories making these shoes. They are the living laboring…
Labor and Working-Class History Association Conference (LAWCHA), Duke University, Durham Organized the roundtable Women and Workplace Activism in the Postwar U.S.: Persistent Efforts to Move Systems with six other women scholars. Presented my paper “Organizing While Marginalized: Gloria Maldonado and Lucy Sledge in the Textile and…