H. Shelton Stromquist

Professor Emeritus

Shelton Stromquist works primarily in the fields of U.S. labor and social history, though his research and teaching took a comparative and global turn in recent years.

His first book, A Generation of Boomers: The Pattern of Railroad Labor Conflict in Nineteenth-Century America – originally a dissertation directed by David Montgomery at the University of Pittsburgh – examined railroad strikes and working-class community in the “era of Great Upheaval.” That work also led him to an interest in the transformation of working-class political culture during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 

Over a number of years, he has cast a wider research net to better understand the comparative context of U.S. municipal labor politics in the period 1890-1920. As a University of Iowa Global Scholar, he did intensive research on urban labor and socialist politics in England, Sweden, Germany, Australia, New Zealand and Austria (Vienna), as well as the US. In 2023 he published the monograph that grew out of that research, Claiming the City: A Global History of Workers’ Fight for Municipal Socialism (Verso Press, 2023). The book received the International Labor History Association’s “Best Book of 2023” prize.

Over his years at Iowa, Shel has been drawn to a number of other related projects which examine the meaning and historical significance of class in American life; the regional processes of class formation (with particular attention to the Midwest); and global patterns of labor mobilization, recruitment and conflict. His book, Reinventing "the People": The Progressive Movement, the Class Problem and the Origins of Modern Liberalism (published in February 2006 by the University of Illinois Press), explores the Progressive Era origins of American liberals' unwillingness to see the world in class terms. He has edited or coedited  several collections of essays, including Labor's Cold War: Local Politics in a Global Context (University of Illinois Press, 2008), Frontiers of Labor: Comparing the United States and Australia (University of Illinois Press, 2018), and most recently A David Montgomery Reader: Essays on Capitalism and Workers’ Resistance (University of Illinois Press, 2024). His continuing interest in Midwestern radical and labor reform traditions is reflected in his book Solidarity and Survival: An Oral History of Iowa Labor in the Twentieth Century (1995) and in the collection of essays he edited with Marvin Bergman, Unionizing the Jungles: Labor and Community in the Twentieth-Century Meatpacking Industry. His work on other global dimensions of labor history is reflected in two essays, "Railroad Workers and the Global Economy: Historical Patterns," and with Hugh Cunningham, "Child Labor and the Rights of Children: Historical Patterns of Decline and Persistence" and in several essays growing out of his work on municipal socialism.

He earned a BA from Yale University in 1966 and a PhD from the University of Pittsburgh in 1981.

Teaching

Professor Stromquist taught undergraduate courses on the history of the American working class, the Gilded Age and Progressive Eras, and the history of U.S. immigration. His graduate courses—both readings and seminars—were generally in the area of U.S. social and labor history and later, comparative labor history.

Courses taught include:

  • HIST:2251 (16A:051) Colloquium for History Majors (American)
  • HIST:4250 (16A:141) Work and Society in Industrializing America
  • HIST:4252 (16A:142) American Labor in the Twentieth Century
  • HIST:4254 (16A:146) Immigrant America 1845-1925
  • HIST:4256 (16A:166) The Progressive Era in America
  • HIST:6120 (16:249) Teaching Seminar for Graduate Instructors
  • HIST:7150 (16:260) Readings in Comparative Labor History
  • HIST:7253 (16:265) Seminar American Social History
  • HIST:7255 (16:266) Readings in Gilded Age and Progressive Era
  • HIST:7254 (16:273) Readings in American Social History

Awards 

  • "Best Book of 2023” International Labor History Association
  • Collegiate Fellow, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (2004-2009, 2010-2015)
  • National Endowment for the Humanities, Research Fellowship, (2011-12)
  • Visiting Research Professor, John Moores University, Liverpool, England (2006)
  • Outstanding Graduate Mentor Award, University of Iowa Graduate College (2003)
  • Arts and Humanities Initiative Grant (2000, 2002, 2004, 2006)
  • Global Scholar Award, University of Iowa (2002-2004)
  • Arts and Humanities Initiative Grant, University of Iowa (2002-2003)
  • Visiting Research Scholar, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia (2001)
  • American Council of Learned Societies Grant-in-aid (1986-1987)
  • National Endowment for the Humanities (Summer 1985)
  • Old Gold Summer Fellowships (1983, 1984)
  • Newberry Library Fellowship (1977)

Publications

Books

Articles

  • “Municipal Socialism” in The Cambridge History of Socialism Volume II (2023)
  • “The United States in an Era of Global Revolution” IN Rethinking Revolutions from 1905 to 1934: Democracy, Social Justice and National Liberation around the World (2023)
  • “The University of Iowa Labor Center and the Attacks on Labor" LAWCHA, LaborOnline (2018)
  • "Domestic 'Dogs of War' Unleashed: The Comparative Fates of Municipal Labor and Socialist Politics in the United States and Australia during the Great War", Frontiers of Labor (2018)
  • “Labor Historians and Traditions of Engaged Scholarship”, Civic Labors (2016)
  • Retrospective: David Montgomery, A Labor Historian's Legacies JGAPE (2014)
  • "Municipal Socialism and the Contested Politics of Everyday Life, 1890-1920," IN: Intervention. The Impact of Labour Movements on Social and Cultural Development (2013)
  • "Building a New Working-Class Politics from Below" in LABOR RISING: The Past and Future of Working People in America (2012)
  • Claiming Political Space: Workers, Municipal Socialism, and the Reconstruction of Local Democracy in Transnational Perspective”, Workers Across the Americas (2011)
  • “Rethinking Working-Class Politics in Comparative-Transnational Contexts” in Rethinking U.S. Labor History – Essays on the Working-Class Experience, 1756-2009 (2010)
  • 'Thinking Globally; Acting Locally': Municipal Labour and Socialist Activism in Comparative Perspective, 1890-1920, Labour History Review (2009)
  • "'Our rights as workingmen': Class traditions and collective action in a nineteenth-century railroad town, 1869-1882," in The Great Strikes of 1877 (2008)
  • "Railroad Workers and the Global Economy: Historical Patterns" in Towards a Global Labor History in the 21st Century (2006)
  • "Child Labor and the Rights of Children: Historical Patterns of Decline and Persistence" in Child Labor and Human Rights: Making Children Matter (2005)
  • "Making Space: Municipal Socialists' Challenge to Elite Rule in New Zealand, Australia, and the United States, 1890-1920" The Past Before Us (2005)
  • “Prairie Politics and the Landscape of Reform,” To Recover a Continent: New Prospects of the American Prairie (1999)
  • "Class Wars: Frank Walsh, the Reformers, and the Crisis of Progressivism" in Labor Histories: Class, Politics, and the Working-Class Experience(1998)
  • "The Crucible of Class: Cleveland Politics and the Origins of Municipal Reform in the Progressive Era" in Journal of Urban History (1997)
  • “The United States,” in The Formation of Labour Movements (1990)
  • “Enginemen and Shopmen: Technological Change and the Organization of Labor in an Era of Railroad Expansion,” Labor History (1983)
  • “The Communist Uprisings of 1926-27 in Indonesia: A Reinterpretation,” Journal of Southeast Asian History, (1967)

Research areas

  • American, social and labor history; global labor history
Shelton Stromquist
shelton-stromquist@uiowa.edu
University of Pittsburgh