Welcome to a research seminar in American history at Södertörn University on Tuesday, November 23, 14.30-16:00! “Affinity: The Subversive Potential of Ephemeral Solidarities in Early Twentieth-Century Los Angeles” Speaker: David Struthers Time: 14.30-16:00 Date: April 23, 2024 Place: PA239 (Primus Building), Södertörn University Abstract Los Angeles was a global hub of anarchism and interracial labor organizing in the early twentieth century. This talk will explore the potential for the concept of affinity to bind together disparate narratives of short-lived labor organizations and job actions through a deep reading of the early 20th century anarchist print culture and other archival traces. Los Angeles had a very small industrial sector before 1920; the regional agricultural economy was far more advanced in terms of scale and corporate organization. This shaped migratory labor patterns typified by urban-rural and rural-rural movement where itinerate workers migrated between seasonal agriculture jobs and short-term infrastructure work—such as laying railroad tracks and gas pipelines, building roads and digging aqueducts—and then back to spend the winter in Los Angeles. The most racially diverse solidarities developed among workers with precarious employment. These solidarities were often temporary, rarely having time to institutionalize, which reflected the migratory labor patterns of the region. The primary consideration of the talk is tracing the textual route through fleeting forms of cooperation that produced modes of experimentation that were extraordinarily successful in transgressing racial, class, and gender hierarchies. Short bio David Struthers received his PhD in history from Carnegie Mellon University and is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Management, Society, and Communication at the Copenhagen Business School. His first monograph The World in a City: Multiethnic Radicalism in Early Twentieth-Century Los Angeles (University of Illinois Press, 2019), received the Shelley Fisher Fishkin Prize for International Scholarship in Transnational American Studies from the American Studies Association. His (with Peter Cole and Kenyon Zimmer) edited volume Wobblies of the World: A Global History of the IWW (Pluto Press, 2017) has been translated into French (Hors d'atteinte, 2021). His current work focuses on short-term solidarities and the history of radical media. -- Best, Christin Mays, PhD Research Coordinator Swedish Institute for North American Studies (SINAS) Department of English, Uppsala University När du har kontakt med oss på Uppsala universitet med e-post så innebär det att vi behandlar dina personuppgifter. För att läsa mer om hur vi gör det kan du läsa här: http://www.uu.se/om-uu/dataskydd-personuppgifter/ E-mailing Uppsala University means that we will process your personal data. For more information on how this is performed, please read here: http://www.uu.se/en/about-uu/data-protection-policy