History from the Bottom Up and the Inside Out: Ethnicity, Race, and Identity in Working-Class History

In History from the Bottom Up and the Inside Out James R. Barrett rethinks the boundaries of American social and labor history by investigating the ways in which working-class, radical, and immigrant people's personal lives intersected with their activism and religious, racial, ethnic, and class identities. Concerned with carving out space for individuals in the story of the working class, Barrett examines all aspects of individuals' subjective experiences, from their personalities, relationships, and emotions to their health and intellectual pursuits. Barrett's subjects include American communists, "blue-collar cosmopolitans"-such as well-read and well-traveled porters, sailors, and hoboes-and figures in early twentieth-century anarchist subculture. He also details the process of the Americanization of immigrant workers via popular culture and their development of class and racial identities, asking how immigrants learned to think of themselves as white. Throughout, Barrett enriches our understanding of working people’s lives, making it harder to objectify them as nameless cogs operating within social and political movements. In so doing, he works to redefine conceptions of work, migration, and radical politics.

Table of Contents:
Foreword / David R. Roediger ix Acknowledgments xvii Introduction. The Subjective Side of Working-Class History 1 1. The Blessed Virgin Made Me a Socialist Historian: An Experiment in Catholic Autobiography and the Historical Understanding of Race and Class 7 2. Was the Personal Political? Reading the Autobiography of American Communism 33 3. Revolution and Personal Crisis: William Z. Foster, Personal Narrative, and the Subjective in the History of American Communism 58 4. Blue-Collar Cosmopolitans: Toward a History of Working-Class Sophistication in Industrial America 77 5. The Bohemian Writer and the Radical Woodworker: A Study in Class Relations 102 6. Americanization from the Botton Up: Immigration and the Remaking of the Working Class in the United States, 1880-1930 122 7. Inbetween Peoples: Race, Nationality, and the "New Immigrant" Working Class / James R. Barrett and David R. Roediger 145 8. Irish Americanization on Stage: How Irish Musicians, Playwrights, and Writers Created a New Urban American Culture, 1880-1940 175 9. Making and Unmaking the Working Class: E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, and the "New Labor History" in the United States 192 Notes 209 Selected Bibliography 273 Index

About the Author :
James R. Barrett is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the author and editor of several books, most recently, The Irish Way: Becoming American in the Multiethnic City. David Roediger is Foundation Professor of American Studies at the University of Kansas and the author of Seizing Freedom: Slave Emancipation and Liberty for All.

Review :
"James R. Barrett’s History from the Bottom Up and the Inside Out defies categorization. It is not singularly a memoir, nor a historiographical examination, nor a book about new approaches to history; it is an amalgam of all three. . . . . Barrett in this book not only synthesizes samples of his previous work, but offers a manifesto of sorts to young scholars for how labor history could be made of flesh and blood." - Robert Cassanello (American Historical Review) "History from the Bottom Up presents a lesson in reflexivity and the process of historical study. . . . This book should be read by all scholars who want to learn more about the process of historical thinking. It is accessible and thought-provoking, arguing persuasively for a closer examination of our own motivations in researching history, as well as a declaration in favour of making the political personal." - Sophie Cooper (Immigrants & Minorities) "History from the Bottom Up and the Inside Out is an exemplary life's work." - Christopher Phelps (Labour History Review) "Here’s how to read James Barrett’s marvellous new collection of essays. Begin with his opening call for American labour historians to pay more attention to the inner worlds of working people . . . so as to give their lives the complexity they deserve. Then flip to the final essay and make your way, one by one, back to the first, following Barrett’s distinguished career as he closes in on the standard he has set for the field." - Kevin Boyle (Social History) "Barrett makes a persuasive case for the utility and beauty of an inside-out approach to labour and working-class history. . . . With its unique, even refreshing mix of the personal and the political-both in content and form-I can see History from the Bottom Up & Inside Out featuring on graduate reading lists for years to come." - Kathryn Olivarius (Canadian Journal of History) “Barrett’s collection of essays is a wonderful book, a model for effective historical method. Students of history, whether practicing scholars or graduate students, will learn much from Barrett’s rigorous approach.” - Thomas Castillo (Labor)