Rank:

Professor of History and African-American Studies

Address:

Department of History  (M/C 198)
913 University Hall
University of Illinois at Chicago
601 South Morgan Street
Chicago, IL 60607

Phone: (312) 996-3141
Fax: (312) 996-5799
Email: Arnesen@uic.edu

Education:

• Ph.D. 1986 Yale University, Department of History, New Haven, CT
• M.A.  1984 Yale University, Department of History, New Haven, CT
• M.A.  1984 Yale University, Afro-American Studies Program
• B.A.  1980 Wesleyan University, Government Department, Middletown, CT
  
  

Race and Labor
African-American History
Labor History
American Social History

Books

• Editor, The Black Worker: Race, Labor, and Civil Rights since Emancipation (University of Illinois Press, 2007)
• General Editor, The Encyclopedia of U.S. Labor and Working Class History, 3 volumes (Routledge, 2006)
• Black Protest and the Great Migration: A Brief History with Documents (Bedford Series in History & Culture, St. Martin's Press, 2002)
• Brotherhoods of Color: Black Railroad Workers and the Struggle for Equality (Harvard University Press, February 2001)
• Editor, The Human Tradition in American Labor History (Scholarly Resources, 2003)
• Waterfront Workers of New Orleans: Race, Class, and Politics, 1863-1923 (Oxford University Press, 1991; University of Illinois Press, paperback edition 1994)
• Co-editor (with Bruce Laurie and Julie Greene), Labor Histories: Class, Politics, and the Working-Class Experience (University of Illinois Press, 1998)
  

Articles:

• “The Quicksands of Economic Insecurity’: African Americans, Strikebreaking, and Labor Activism in the Industrial Era,” in Eric Arnesen, ed., The Black Worker: Race, Labor, and Civil Rights since Emancipation (University of Illinois Press, 2007), 41-71 [a revised and expanded version of “Specter of the Black Strikebreaker: Race, Employment, and Labor Activism in the Industrial Era,” Labor History 44, No. 3 (Winter 2003), 319-335]
• “No ‘Graver Danger’: Black Anticommunism, the Communist Party, and the Race Question” and “The Red and the Black: Reflections on the Responses to ‘No Graver Danger,’” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 3, No. 4 (Winter 2006), 13-52, 75-79 (Roundtable essay with responses by John Earl Haynes, Martha Biondi, Kenneth Janken, and Carol Anderson)
• “Passion and Politics: Race and the Writing of Working-Class History,” The Journal of the Historical Society 6, No. 3 (Fall 2006), 323-356
• “Labor and the Problem of Social Unity during World War II: Katherine Archibald’s Wartime Shipyard in Retrospect,” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 3, No. 1 (Spring 2006), 113-146 (co-authored with Alex Lichtenstein).  An expanded version of the article appears as the introduction, “All Kinds of People,” to the reprint of Katherine Archibald, Wartime Shipyard: A Study in Social Disunity (1947; rpt., University of Illinois Press, 2006) 
• "Willard S. Townsend: Black Workers, Civil Rights, and the Labor Movement," in Nina Mjagkij, ed., Portraits of African American Life Since 1865 (Scholarly Resources, 2003)
• "A. Philip Randolph: Labor and the New Black Politics," in Eric Arnesen, ed., The Human Tradition in American Labor History (Scholarly Resources, forthcoming Fall 2003)
• Scholarly Controversy: "Whiteness and the Historians' Imagination," International Labor and Working-Class History, No. 60 ( Fall 2001), 3-32
• Scholarly Controversy: "Assessing the Whiteness Genre: A Reply to James Barrett, David Brody, Barbara Fields, Eric Foner, Victoria Hattam, and Adolph Reed," in International Labor and Working-Class History, No. 60 ( Fall 2001), 81-92
  
• "'Like Banquo's Ghost, It Will Not Down': The Race Question & the American Railroad Brotherhoods, 1880-1920," American Historical Review 99, No. 5 (December 1994), 1601-1633. Reprinted in Darlene Clark Hine and Earnestine Jenkins, eds., A Question of Manhood: A Reader in Black Masculinity in the United States (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001)
• "Race and Labour in a Southern U.S. Port: The Case of New Orleans, 1860-1930," in S. Davies, C. Davis, D. De Vries, L. Heerma Van Voss, L. Hesselink, and K. Weinhauer, eds., Comparative International History of Dock Labor, c. 1790s-1970s (Edinburgh: Ashgate, 2000), 38-56
• "The Pullman Strike and the Long Shadow of Race." Remarks at "The Second Annual Arthur J. Goldberg Conference on Labor Law: The Pullman Strike: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow," in The John Marshall Law Review (Spring 2000), 611-617
• "Up from Exclusion: Black and White Workers, Race, and the State of Labor History," Reviews in American History 26, No. 1 (March 1998) (special issue entitled "The Challenge of American History”), 146-174; reprinted in The Challenge of American History, ed. Louis Masur (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999)
• "Biracial Waterfront Unionism in the Age of Segregation," in Cal Winslow, ed., Waterfront Workers: New Essays on Race and Class (University of Illinois Press, 1998), 19-61
• "Turning Points: Biracial Unions in the Age of Segregation, 1893- 1901," in Louisiana Purchase Bicentennial Series, Vol. 11, Part B, African-Americans and Race Relations, ed. Charles Vincent (Lafayette: Center for Louisiana Studies, University of Louisiana, 2001), 450-500. Reprint of Chapter 4 of Waterfront Workers of New Orleans: Race, Class, and Politics, 1863-1923
• "Charting an Independent Course: African-American Railroad Workers in the World War I Era," in Arnesen, Greene, and Laurie, eds., Labor Histories: Class, Politics, and the Working-Class Experience (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 284-307
• "'It aint like they do in New Orleans': Race Relations, Labour Markets, and Waterfront Labour Movements in the American South, 1880-1923," in Marcel Van Der Linden and Jan Lucassen, eds., Racism and the Labour Market: Historical Studies (Bern: Peter Lang, 1995), 57-100
• "American Workers and the Labor Movement in the Late Nineteenth Century" in Charles Calhoun, ed., The Gilded Age: Essays on the Origins of Modern America (Scholarly Resources, 1995), 37-57
• "'What's on the Black Worker's Mind?': African-American Labor and the Union Tradition on the Gulf Coast," Gulf Coast Historical Review 10, No. 1 (Fall 1994), 7-30
• "Following the Color Line of Labor: Black Workers and the Labor Movement before 1930," Radical History Review No. 55 (Winter 1993), 53-87
• "Crusades Against Crisis: A View from the United States on the 'Rank-and-File' Critique and Other Catalogues of Labour History's Alleged Ills," International Review of Social History , XXXV, No. 1 (1990), 106-127
• "Learning the Lessons of Solidarity: Work Rules and Race Relations on the New Orleans Waterfront, 1880-1901," Labor's Heritage 1, No. 1 (January 1989), 26-45. Excerpted in Labor Links (Greater New Orleans AFL-CIO) 2, No. 1 (March-April 1989)
• "To Rule or Ruin: New Orleans Dock Workers' Struggle for Control, 1902-1903," Labor History 28, No. 2 (Summer 1987), 139-66
  

Encyclopedia Entries and Popular Writing:

• “Organized Labor and the Great Migration” and “Strikebreaking” in Steven A. Reich, ed., Greenwood Encyclopedia of the Great Black Migration (Greenwood Press, 2006), 638-645, 805-807
• “Introduction,” “Great Migration,” “Isaac Myers,” “Steele v. L&N Railroad (1944),” “Willard Townsend,” and “International Brotherhood of Red Caps/United Transport Service Employees of America,” in Eric Arnesen, ed., The Encyclopedia of U.S. Labor and Working-Class History (Routledge, November 2006), xxxv-xxxvii, 547-550, 665-667,  921-933, 1324-1327
• Consulting Editor, Issue Theme: "Blacks and the Railroads." Footsteps: African American History, January/February 2002 (A Cobblestone Publication for 4th and 5th grade students)
• "Working on the Railroad," "Just Look for the 'Red Cap,'" and "A Victory for Fair Employment?" in Footsteps: African American History, January/February 2002, pp. 2-5, 28, 36-38
• "Halena Wilson" in Women Building Chicago 1790-1990: A Biographical Dictionary, ed. Rima Lunin Schultz and Adele Hast (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 986-988
• "Negro Railway Labor Committee," "Provisional Committee to Organize Locomotive Firemen," "Railway Men's International Benevolent Industrial Association," and "United Transport Service Employees of America," in Nina Mjagkij, ed., Organizing Black America: An Encyclopedia of African American Associations (Garland Publishing, 2001), 506-507, 596-598, 599-600, 676-677
• "African-American Labor History" in The African-American Experience, Michele Stepto, ed. (Research Publications' The American Journey: History in Your Hands CD-ROM. Woodbridge, CT: Research Publications International, 1995)
• "Labor and Labor Unions" and "Socialism" in the Encyclopedia of African American Culture and History, Jack Salzman, David Lionel Smith, and Cornel West, eds. (New York: Macmillan Library Reference, 1995), V.3, 1563-1570 and V.5, 2514-2516
• "Employment" and "Industrial Revolution" in the Encyclopedia of Multiculturalism, Susan Auerbach, ed. (New York: Marshall Cavendish Corp., 1994),573-582, 911-915
  
  

Review Essays:

• “A Tide of Hatred.” Review of Jean Pfaelzer, Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans in the Chicago Tribune Books Section (December 8, 2007)
• “Unthinking the Unthinkable.” Review of Richard Rhodes, Arsenals of Folly: The Making of the Nuclear Arms Race; “A Useful Look at the Making of the Atomic Bomb.” Sidebar on Cynthia C. Kelly, ed., The Manhattan Project: The Birth of the Atomic Bomb in the Words of its Creators, Eyewitnesses, and Historians in the Chicago Tribune Books Section (October 20, 2007)
• “An Extraordinary Sojourn.” Review of Linda Colley, The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History  in the Chicago Tribune Books Section (October 13, 2007)
• “America’s Family Secret?” Review of Elliot Jaspin, Buried in the Bitter Watters: The Hidden History of Racial Cleansing in America in The Christian Century (September 18, 2007), 45, 47-48
• “Nation Building.” Review of Richard Kluger, Seizing Destiny: How America Grew from Sea to Shining Sea in the Chicago Tribune Books Section (September 15, 2007)
• “Rise to Power.” Review of Jeremi Suri, Henry Kissinger and the American Century in the Chicago Tribune Books Section (August 4, 2007)
• “Thou Shalt Spread Liberty.” Review of David Gelernter, Americanism: The Fourth Great Western Religion in the Chicago Tribune Books Section (July 28, 2007)
• “Revising the Revisionists.” Review of Jack Beatty, Age of Betrayal: The Triumph of Money in America, 1865-1900 in the Chicago Tribune Books Section (July 14, 2007)
• “Visible Man.” Review of Arnold Rampersad, Ralph Ellison: A Biography in the Chicago Tribune Books Section (June 16, 2007)
• “Year of Living Dangerously.” Review of Ann Hagedorn, Savage Peace: Hope and Fear in America, 1919 in the Chicago Tribune Books Section (May 19, 2007)
• “Reform vs. Radicalism in Anti-Slavery Politics.” Review of James Oakes, The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics in the Chicago Tribune Books Section (May 6, 2007)
• “Poverty from a Rich Man's Perspective: Author puts focus on Himself, Not the Poor.” Review of William T. Vollmann, Poor People in the Chicago Tribune Books Section (April 1, 2007)
• “Examining the Political Radicalism of Martin Luther King, Jr.” Review essay on Thomas F. Jackson, From Civil Rights to Human Rights: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Struggle for Economic Justice and Michael K. Honey, Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, King’s Last Campaign in the Chicago Tribune Books Section (March 11, 2007)
• “A Gripping Account of Civil Rights and the Press.” Review of Gene Roberts and Hank Kilbanoff, The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation in the Chicago Tribune Books Section (January 7, 2007)
• “In-Between People.” Review of Melvin Ely, Israel on the Appomattox: A Southern Experiment in Black Freedom from the 1790s through the Civil War in The New Republic (January 1-15, 2007), 34-37
• “A Well-Told and Detailed Biography of America’s Dullest Plutocrat.” Review of David Cannadine, Mellon: An American Life in the Chicago Tribune Books Section (December 17, 2006) 
• “Tracking Down the Man Behind a Railroad Legend.” Review of Scott Reynolds Nelson, Steel Drivin’ Man: John Henry, the Untold Story of an American Legend in the Chicago Tribune Books Section (November 12, 2006)
• “The Mind of the (White) South.” Review of Jason Sokol, There Goes my Everything: White Southerners in the Age of Civil Rights, 1945-1975 in the Boston Globe (October 29, 2006)
• “Reporting Against the Current.” Review of Myra MacPherson, “All Governments Lie”: The Life and Times of Rebel Journalist I.F. Stone and Karl Weber, ed., The Best of I.F. Stone in the Chicago Tribune Books Section (October 22, 2006)
• “A Vivid but Uneven Account of the Collapse of Reconstruction.” Review of Nicholas Lemann, Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War in the Chicago Tribune Books Section (September 17, 2006)
• “Muckraker Upton Sinclair – Beyond ‘The Jungle.’” Review of Anthony Arthur, Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair in the Chicago Tribune Books Section (July 2, 2006)
• “A Compelling Account of Another Revolutionary-Era Fight for Freedom.” Review of Simon Schama, Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and the American Revolution in the Chicago Tribune Books Section (May 21, 2006)
• “Examining America’s History of Regime Change.” Review of Stephen Kinzer, Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq in the Chicago Tribune Books Section (May 14, 2006)
• “A Powerful Look at the Haymarket Riot.” Review of James Green, Death in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movement, and the Bombing That Divided Gilded Age America in the Chicago Tribune Books Section (April 2, 2006)
• “A Better Society Through Breeding?” Review of Harry Bruinius, Better for All the World: The Secret History of Forced Sterilization and America's Quest for Racial Purity in the Chicago Tribune Books Section (March 26, 2006)
• “An Engaging Life of the Great Commoner.” Review of Michael Kazin,  A Godly Hero: The Life of William JenningsBryan in the Chicago Tribune Books Section (March 5, 2006)
• “Defining Americans During Wartime.” Review of Richard Slotkin, Lost Battalions: The Great War and the Crisis of American Nationality in the Chicago Tribune Books Section (February 12, 2006)
• “A Defining Figure.” Review of Taylor Branch, At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68 in the Boston Globe (January 15, 2006)
• “Historian John Hope Franklin Tells His Own Story.” Review of John Hope Franklin, Mirror to America: The Autobiography of John Hope Franklin in the Chicago Tribune Sunday Books Section (January 1, 2006)
• "A Fascinating, Disturbing Look at Elite-College Admissions." Review of Jerome Karabel, The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, in the Chicago Tribune Sunday Books Section (December 11, 2005)
• "Only Yesterday." Review of James Patterson, Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush v. Gore, in the Chicago Tribune Sunday Books Section (November 27, 2005)
• "Comparing Urban Crises: Race, Migration, and the Transformation of the Modern American City." Review Essay of Heather Thompson, Whose Detroit? Politics, Labor, and Race in a Modern American City, Wendell Pritchett, Brownsville, Brooklyn: Blacks, Jews, and the Changing Face of the Ghetto, and Carmen Teresa Whalen, From Puerto Rico to Philadelphia: Puerto Rican Workers and Postwar Economies, in Social History 30, No. 4 (November 2005), 499-507
  
• "Author Gives Textbooks a Failing Grade for their Portrayal of Rosa Parks." Review of Herbert Kohl, She Would Not Be Moved: How We Tell the Stroy of Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, in the Chicago Tribune Sunday Books Section (November 20, 2005)
• "The White Collar Blues." Review of Barbara Ehrenreich, Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream, in the Chicago Tribune Sunday Books Section (September 4, 2005)
• "Strike Makers." Review of Bruce Watson, Bread and Roses: Mills, Migrants, and the Struggle for the American Dream, in the Chicago Tribune Sunday Books Section (August 14, 2005)
• "Battle of the Titans." Review of Les Standiford, Meet You in Hell: Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, and the Bitter Partnership that Transformed America, in Chicago Tribune Sunday Books Section (July 10, 2005)
• "A Liberal's Lament." Review essay of Douglas S. Massey, Return of the "L" Word: A Liberal Vision for the New Century in the Chicago Tribune Sunday Books Section (June 26, 2005)
• "Nuclear Family Man." Review essay on Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer and Jennet Conant, 109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos in the Chicago Tribune Sunday Books Section (May 22, 2005)
• "Evaluating the Missing Wave." Contribution to a roundtable section on Dorothy Sue Cobble, The Other Women's Movement: Workplace Justice and Social Rights in Modern America in Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 2, No. 4 (Winter 2005), 48-51
• "LBJ and MLK: With Eyes on the Prize." Review of Nick Kotz, Judgment Days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Laws that Changed America in Boston Globe (May 8, 2005)
• Freedom Movement." Review essay on Adam Hochschild, Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves in Chicago Tribune Sunday Books (February 20, 2005)
• Dissent or Disloyalty?" Review of Geoffrey R. Stone, Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from The Sedition Act of 1798 to The War on Terrorism in the Chicago Tribune Sunday Books Section (January 30, 2005)
• "Children on the Edge," Review of Steven Mintz, Huck's Raft: A History of American Childhood in the Chicago Tribune Sunday Books Section (January 2, 2005)
• "Shedding Light on Franklin's Compromises." Review of David Waldstreicher, Runaway America: Benjamin Franklin, Slavery, and the American Revolution in the Boston Globe (November 14, 2004) (http://www.boston.com/ae/books/articles/2004/11/14/shedding_light_on_franklins_compromises/)
• "Law and Disorder." Review of Kevin Boyle, Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age in the Chicago Tribune Sunday Books Section (October 10, 2004)
• "Upshot of a Revolution." Review essay on Godfrey Hodgson, More Equal Than Others: America from Nixon to the New Century in the Chicago Tribune Sunday Books Section (September 5, 2004)
• "After Degradation." Review essay on Steven Hahn, A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration in The New Republic (August 2, 2004), 33-36
• "'We' vs. Them." Review essay on Samuel Huntington, Who Are We?: The Challenges to America's National Identity in the Chicago Tribune Sunday Books Section (July 11, 2004)
• "Split Decision." Review essay on Charles J. Ogletree, All Deliberate Speed: Reflections on the First Half-Century of Brown v. Board of Education and Derrick Bell, Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfilled Hopes for Racial Reform in the Boston Globe (April 25, 2004) (http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2004/04/25/split_decision?pg=full)
• "Just Out of Reach: A Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author Looks at Americans Who Suffer in Good Economic Times and Bad." Review of David K. Shipler, The Working Poor: Invisible in America in the Chicago Tribune Sunday Books Section (April 25, 2004)
• "Whiz Kids: An Elegant Look at Some Young Artists of Mathematics." Review of Steve Olson, Count Down: Six Kids Vie for Glory at the World's Toughest Math Competition in the Chicago Tribune Sunday Books Section (April 18, 2004)
• "Black Americans on the Changing of Black America." Review essay on Henry Louis Gates, Jr., America Behind the Color Line: Dialogues with African Americans and Timuel D. Black Jr., Bridges of Memory: Chicago's First Wave of Black Migration in Chicago Tribune Sunday Books Section (March 7, 2004)
• "Remaking the Nation." Review of Michael McGerr, A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870-1920 in the Chicago Tribune Sunday Books Section (February 22, 2004)
• "A Deadly Case of Southern Injustice." Review of Steve Oney, And the Dead Shall Rise: The Murder of Mary Fagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank in the Chicago Tribune Sunday Books Section (January 11, 2004)
• "The Parent Trap." Review essay on Ann Hulbert, Raising America: Experts, Parents, and a Century of Advice About Children, Peter N. Stearns, Anxious Parents: A History of Modern Childrearing in America, and David Anderegg, Worried All the Time: Overparenting in an Age of Anxiety and How to Stop It in the Chicago Tribune Sunday Books Section (December 20, 2003)
• "Analyzing Martin Luther King's 'Dream' Speech." Review essay on Drew D. Hansen, The Dream: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Speech That Inspired a Nation, in Chicago Tribune Sunday Books section (August 24, 2003)
• "American as Apple Pie." Review essay on Lucy G. Barber, Marching on Washington: The Forging of an American Tradition, Tananarive Due and Patricia Stephens Due, Freedom in the Family: A Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights, and Todd Gitlin, Letters to a Young Activist, in Chicago Tribune Sunday Books Section (July 6, 2003)
• "A Black-and White Whodunit From 1865." Review of Suzanne Lebsock, A Murder in Virginia: Southern Justice on Trial, in Chicago Tribune Sunday Books section (June 29, 2003)
• "A Riveting Look at Racial Hatred in Mississippi." Review essay on Paul Henrickson, Sons of Mississippi: A Story of Race and its Legacy, in Chicago Tribune Sunday Books Section (June 1, 2003)
• "Consumed by Consumption." Review essay on Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America, Susan J. Matt, Keeping Up with the Jones: Envy in American Consumer Society, 1890-1930, Thomas Hine, I Want That! How We All Became Shoppers, James B. Twitchell, Living It Up: Our Love Affair with Luxury, and Tim Kasser, The High Price of Materialism in Chicago Tribune Sunday Books Section (April 20, 2003)
• "Race in America, Past and Present." Review essay on Stephan Talty, Mulatto America: At the Crossroads of Black and White Culture: A Social History, in Chicago Tribune Sunday Books Section (February 2, 2003)
• "Rethinking the Movement." Review essay on J. Mills Thornton III, Dividing Lines: Municipal Politics and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Montgomery, Birmingham, and Selma, in The Nation (December 16, 2002), 28-33
• "A Civic Gender Gap." Review of Maureen Flanagan, Seeing With Their Hearts: Chicago Women and the Vision of the Good City, 1871-1933, in Chicago Tribune Sunday Book Section (November 17, 2002)
• "Agendas for Equality" and "Civil Rights Before the Modern Movement: Recommended Readings." Review essay/retrospective analysis of Rayford W. Logan, ed., What the Negro Wants (1944; new edition 2001), in Chicago Tribune Sunday Books Section (September 15, 2002)
• "Beating the Heat." Review essay on Eric Klineberg, Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago and Marsha E. Ackermann, Cool Comfort: America's Romance with Air-Conditioning, in Chicago Tribune Sunday Books Section (August 18, 2002)
• "A Paler Shade of White." The New Republic (June 24, 2002), 33-38
• "Examining the History of Unionism." Review of Nelson Lichtenstein, State of the Unions: A Century of American Labor, in Chicago Tribune Sunday Book Section (May 5, 2002)
• “A Gripping Account of Civil Rights and the Press.” Review of Gene Roberts and Hank Kilbanoff, The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation in the Chicago Tribune Books Section (January 7, 2007)
• “Identity and the Past.” Review of Cheri Register, Packinghouse Daughter: A Memoir in Chicago Tribune Sunday Books Section (February 17, 2002)
• "Shame of the Nation." Review of Phillip Dray, At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America, in Chicago Tribune Sunday Books Section (January 27, 2002)
• "Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters." Review of Thaddeus Russell, Out of the Jungle: Jimmy Hoffa and the Remaking of the American Working Class, in Chicago Tribune Sunday Books Section (October 28, 2001)
• "Portrait of an Outsider." Review of Hazel Rowley, Richard Wright: The Life and Times, in Chicago Tribune Sunday Books Section (September 2, 2001)
• "A Life Against the Grain." Review of David Levering Lewis, W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919-1963, in Chicago Tribune Sunday Books section (December 10, 2000)
• "The 1890s Crisis in Context: The Pullman Strike, Labor Politics, and the New Liberalism." A review essay of Richard Schneirov, Shelton Stromquist, and Nick Salvatore, eds., The Pullman Strike and the Crisis of the 1890s: Essays on Labor and Politics and Richard Schneirov, Labor and Urban Politics: Class Conflict and the Origins of Modern Liberalism in Chicago, 1865-97, in Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 92, No. 3 (Autumn 1999), 299-305
• "History First: Putting Urban Poverty in Perspective," in Symposium on Thomas Sugrue's The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit in Labor History 39, No. 1 (1998), 43-47. (Symposium coordinated by Arnesen)
• "Race, Party, and Packinghouse Exceptionalism," in Symposium onRick Halpern, "Down on the Killing Floor: Black and White Workers in Chicago's Packinghouses, 1904-54" and Roger Horowitz, "'Negro and White, Unite and Fight!': A Social History of Industrial Unionism in Meatpacking," in Labor History 40, No. 2 (May 1999), 207-212 (Symposium coordinated by Arnesen)
• "The African-American Working Class in the Jim Crow Era." A review essay of Neil R. McMillen, Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow; Joe Trotter, Jr., Coal, Class, and Color: Blacks in Southern West Virginia, 1915-32; Earl Lewis, In Their Own Interest: Blacks in Norfolk in the Twentieth Century, and Robin D. G. Kelley, Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression in International Labor and Working-Class History, No. 41 (Spring 1992), 59-75
  
  

Selected Reviews:

• Review: Thomas C. Buchanan, Black Life on the Mississippi: Slaves, Free Blacks, and the Western Steamboat World in Civil War History 53, No. 3 (September 2007), 293-295
• Review: Marcy S. Sacks, Before Harlem: The Black Experience in New York City Before World War I inLabor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 4, No. 3 (Fall 2007), 109-112
• Review: Paul Ortiz, Emancipation Betrayed: The Hidden History of Black Organizing and White Violence in Florida from Reconstruction to the Bloody Election of 1920 in the Journal of American History 93, No. 1 (June 2006), 237 
• Review: William P. Jones, The Tribe of Black Ulysses: African American Lumber Workers in the Jim Crow South in Business History Review 79, No. 4 (Winter 2005), 868-70
• Review:  Shane White, Stories of Freedom in Black New Yorkand Leslie Harris, In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626-1863 in Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 2, No. 2 (Spring 2005), 146-149
• Review: Michael W. Fitzgerald, Urban Emancipation: Popular Politics in Reconstruction Mobile 1860-1890 in Alabama Review 57, No. 2 (April 2004), 149-152
• Review: Kenneth D. Durr, Behind the Backlash: White Working-Class Politics in Baltimore, 1940-1980 in the Journal of American History 91, No. 1 (June 2004), 317-318
• Review: Robert Steinfeld, Coercion, Contract, and Free Labor in the Nineteenth Century in Law and History Review 21, No. 3 (Fall 2003), 628-629
• Review: Jeffrey B. Perry, A Hubert Harrison Reader in African American Review 37, No. 1 (Spring 2003), 160-161
• Review: " A Tarnished Icon.” Review of Eliot Gorn, Mother Jones: The Most Dangerous Woman in America in Reviews in American History (March 2002)
• Review: Elizabeth Dale, The Rule of Justice: The People of Chicago Versus Zephyr Davis in American Historical Review 108, No. 1 (February 2003), 101
• Review: Victoria Wolcott, Remaking Respectability: African American Women in Interwar Detroit in Labor History 43, No. 3 (August 2002), 370-371
• Review: Mary L. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy in International Labor and Working-Class History No. 62 (Fall 2002), 242-245
• Review: Bruce Nelson, Divided We Stand: American Workers and the Struggle for Black Equality in International Labor and Working-Class History No. 62 (Fall 2002), 223-226
• Review: Howard Kimeldorf, Battling for American Labor: Wobblies, Craft Workers, and the Making of the Union Movement in Labor History 43, No. 1-2 (February/May 2002), 218-221
• Review: Andrew Edmund Kersten, Race, Jobs, and the War: The FEPC in the Midwest, 1941-46, in Annals of Iowa 60, No. 4 (Fall 2001), 354-356
• Review: Melvyn Dubofsky, Hard Work: The Making of Labor History, in Industrial and Labor Relations Review 54, No. 4 (July 2001), 900-902
• Review: Kevin Boyle, ed., Organized Labor and American Politics, 1894-1994, in Social History 25, No. 3 (October 2000), 378- 380
• Review: Daniel Kryder, Divided Arsenal: Race and the American State During World War II, in The Business History Review 74, No. 4 (Winter 2000), 720-723
• Review: Michael Zweig, The Working Class Majority: America's Best Kept Secret, in Labor History 42, No. 2 (May 2001), 217-218
• Review: Colin J. Davis and Edwin L. Brown, It is Union and Liberty: Alabama Coal Miners and the UMW, in Journal of Southern History 67 (November 2001), 894-895
• Review: August Sartorius von Waltershausen, The Workers' Movement in the United States, 1879-1885, edited by David Montgomery and Marcel van der Linden, in Labor History 41, No. 2 (2000) 220-221
• Review: Bryant Simon, A Fabric of Defeat: The Politics of South Carolina Millhands,1910-1948, in Law and History Review (Fall 2000), 700-702
• Review: V. P. Franklin, Nancy L. Grant, Harold M. Kletnick, and Genna Rae McNeil, eds., African Americans and Jews in the Twentieth Century: Studies in Convergence and Conflict, in the Journal of Southern History LXVI, No. 3 (August 2000), 666-668
• Review: Timothy J. Minchin, Hiring the Black Worker: The Racial Integration of the Southern Textile Industry, 1960-1980, in Journal of American History 87, No. 1 (June 2000), 302-303
• Review: Eddie Stimpson, Jr., My Remembers: A Black Sharecropper's Recollections of the Depression, in Labor History 41, No. 2 (May 2000), 227-228
• Review: Bill V. Mullen, Popular Fronts: Chicago and African- American Cultural Politics, 1935-46, in Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 92, No. 4 (Winter 1999-2000), 405-408
• Review: Alex Lichtenstein, Twice the Work of Free Labor: The Political Economy of Convict Labor in the New South, in Journal of Economic History 57 (March 1997), 237-38
• Review: Adam Fairclough, Race and Democracy: The Civil Rights Struggle in Louisiana 1915-1972, in Journal of American History (March 1996), 1603-04
• Review: Gary M. Fink, The Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills Strike of 1914-1915: Espionage, Labor Conflict, and New South Industrial Relations in The Journal of Economic History 54, No. 2 (June 1994), 472-73
• Review: Douglas Flamming, Creating the Modern South: Millhands and Managers in Dalton, Georgia, 1884-1984, in Journal of American History (June 1994), 297-98
• Review: Steve Rosswurm, ed., The CIO's Left-Led Unions in The Journal of Economic History 53, No. 3 (September 1993), 688-70
• Review: Jacqueline Jones, The Dispossessed: America's Underclasses from the Civil War to the Present, in The Western Historical Quarterly (February 1993), 74-76
• Review: Paul Krause, The Battle for Homestead 1880-1892: Politics, Culture, and Steel, in American Historical Review (June 1993), 963-64
• Review: Robin D. G. Kelley, Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression, in American Historical Review (February 1992), 304-05
  
  

Miscellaneous Publications

• “Premature Obituaries, Abiding Laments,” Historically Speaking: The Bulletin of the Historical Society VIII, No. 8 (forthcoming November/December 2007)
• “Time’s Up -- Or Else!  On Taking the Illinois State Ethics Training Tutorial,”  Inside Higher Ed (November 29, 2007) at http://insidehighered.com/views/2007/11/29/arnesen
• “Favorite Labor Novels:  Kevin Baker’s Paradise Alley” in Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 4 No. 4 (Winter 2007), 25-26
• “The Recent Historiography of British Abolitionism: Academic Scholarship, Popular History, and the Broader Reading Public,” Historically Speaking: The Bulletin of the Historical Society VIII, No. 6 (July/August 2007), 22-25
• Coordinator, “Up for Debate” Symposium on Daniel Tichenor, "Making Sausage and
  Immigration Policy: The Politics and Pathologies of Reform," for Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas (forthcoming 2007)
• Coordinator, “Up for Debate” Symposium on Ava Baron and Eileen Boris, “The ‘Body’ as a Useful Category of Working-Class History” for Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 4, No. 2 (Summer 2007), 23-63
• Coordinator, “Up for Debate” Symposium on Nelson Lichtenstein, “Supply-Chains, Workers’ Chains and the New World of Retail Supremacy” for Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 4, No. 1 (Spring 2007), 17-63
• Introduction and Coordinator, “Up for Debate” Symposium on “Assessing the Legacy of Herbert Hill: An Introduction,” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 3, No. 2 (Summer 2006), 11-12
• “Recommended Reading: Peeking Inside the Ivy-Covered Walls,” Chicago Tribune Books, December 11, 2005
• “Labor’s Pains,” Chicago Tribune Sunday Magazine (June 19, 2005)
• “Uncovering the History of Civil Rights: Two UIC Historians Cast New Light on Behind-the-Scenes Activists for Racial Justice,” AtLAS: A Magazine for Alumni and Friends of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences 2004-2005 (published by the University of Illinois at Chicago), 16-19
• With Katrin Schultheiss, “A Selection of Books for Harvard’s President,” Chicago Tribune Sunday Books Section (March 6, 2005)
• “Information Overload.” Chronicle of Higher Education on-line edition (December 11, 2003),
• “Recommended Reading: A Selection of Books About Black History,” Chicago Tribune Sunday Books Section (March 9, 2003)
• "Transportation: Maritime, Railroad, and Trucking,” in Eric Arnesen, Alan Derickson, James Green, Walter Licht, and Marjorie Murphy/ Historians (Susan Cianci Salvatore/Preservation Planner), American Labor History Theme Study for the National Park Service, United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Form 10-900 USDI/NPS NRHP Registration Form (Rev. 8-86), OMB No. 1024-0018, January 2003

History Articles for Young Readers

• Consulting Editor, “The 1961 Freedom Rides,” Cobblestone (forthcoming April 2008)
• Consulting Editor, Issue Theme: "Growing Up in the Civil Rights Movement," AppleSeeds (forthcoming)
• “Delicate Diplomacy,” Cobblestone 28, No. 5 (May 2007) (thematic issue on President John F. Kennedy), 26-29
• “A Decade of Extremes,” “Putting Out the Unwelcome Mat,” and “And the Market Crashes,” Cobblestone 27, No. 4 (April 2006), 2, 26-27, 36-37
• Consulting Editor, Issue Theme: “The Roaring Twenties,” Cobblestone 27, No. 4 (April 2006)
• Consulting Editor, Issue Theme: “Malcolm X,” Footsteps: African American History 8, No. 2 (March/April 2006)
• “Dr. King Wants the Same Thing I Want – Freedom,” “Truth Is on the Side of the Oppressed,” and “Power Never Takes a Back Step,” Footsteps: African American History 8, No. 2 (March/April 2006), 24-26, 30-31, 32-33
• “Petitioning for Freedom,” Footsteps: African American History 8, No. 1 (January/February 2006), 32-34 (thematic issue on “Heroes of Early America”)
• “A New Deal for Americans” and “African Americans and the CCC” in Cobblestone (April 2005) (thematic issue on the Civilian Conservation Corps), 6-9, 22-23
• “A Progressive Era?” “In Search of America’s Workers,” and “A Bright Spotlight,” in Cobblestone (March 2005) (thematic issue on muckrakers in the Progressive Era), 2-5, 10-12, 36-37
• Consulting Editor, Issue Theme: “A Legacy of Labor: The Civilian Conservation Corps,” Cobblestone (April 2005)
• Consulting Editor, Issue Theme: “The Scoop on Muckrakers” Cobblestone (March 2005)
• Consulting Editor, Issue Theme: "Muckrakers in the Progressive Era," Cobblestone (forthcoming Fall 2004)
• Consulting Editor, Issue Theme: "Emancipation and Reconstruction," Footsteps: African American History (September/October 2004)
• "What Was Reconstruction?," "Power of Literacy," "A Voice in Government," "Beyond Reconstruction," and "Reflections and Memories: Black Reconstruction," Footsteps: African American History (September/October 2004) (thematic issue on Emancipation and Reconstruction), 2-3, 8-10, 20-23, 38-40, 41-43
  "Church and Community," "A Force by Itself," and "A Key Activist," Footsteps: African American History (January/February 2004) (thematic issue Black Churches), 2-3, 8-9, 35-36
  
• "A Winning Role," "International Star," and "Voice of the Ages," Footsteps: African American History (November/December 2003) (thematic issue on Paul Robeson), 2-5, 12-14, 14-17
• "Fighting for Freedom," "Reminiscences of My War," and "Exclusion and Segregation," Footsteps: African American History (September/October 2003) (thematic issue on "Blacks and the Military"), 12-15, 16-17, 30-34
• "Learning from the Best: Charles Hamilton Houston," and "Working With the NAACP," Footsteps: African American History (March/April 2003) (thematic issue on Thurgood Marshall), 16-20, 21-23
• "The Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850," in Cobblestone (February 2003), 7-11
• Consulting Editor, Issue Theme: "Blacks and the Railroads," Footsteps: African American History, January/February 2002 (A Cobblestone Publication for 4th and 5th grade students)
• "Working on the Railroad," "Just Look for the 'Red Cap,'" and "A Victory for Fair Employment?" in Footsteps: African American History, January/February 2002, pp. 2-5, 28, 36-38

Writings in Progress:

• Editor, The Encyclopedia of American Labor History, 3 vols. (under contract, Routledge)
• A. Philip Randolph: Civil Rights, Labor, and the New Black Politics (under contract, Hill and Wang)

Selected Media Appearances: 

• Radio interview on “The Black Worker: Race, Labor, and Civil Rights Since Emancipation,” The Alvin Augustus Jones Show, Paradise Radio Network, WCBQ-AM 1340/WHNC-AM 890 (Oxford, North Carolina) , July 23, 2007 (at www.dralvinjones.com/content/01 Eric Arnesen.wma)
• C-Span 2 Book Notes: Chair of program, “Ann Hagedorn, author of ‘Savage Peace: Hope and Fear in America, 1919,’ in conversation with Eric Arnesen,” at the Chicago Tribune Printers Row Book Fair, Chicago, June 10, 2007, broadcast at 11-11;45 CST
  
• Radio interview on Labor Day in history, The Tom Peterson Show, WGN 720 AM radio, September 3, 2006
• C-Span 2 Book Notes: Chair of program, “Kevin Boyle, author of ‘Arc of Justice,’ in conversation with Eric Arnesen” at the Chicago Tribune Printers Row Book Fair, Chicago,  June 11, 2005, broadcast 1:30-2:10 CST
• Radio interview on the 40th anniversary of the March on Washington, WGN Radio, August 28, 2003
• Television interview on the 40th anniversary of the murder of Medgar Evers, ABC 7 News, WLS-TV, Chicago, June 13, 2003
• Guest, “The Rhetoric of Class Warfare” on Odyssey (WBEZ Chicago Public Radio), January 21, 2003
• Television Interview on “Brotherhoods of Color,” FOX 32, June 2001
• Radio Interview on “May Day,” Eight Forty-Eight, (WBEZ Chicago Public Radio), May 1, 2001

Selected Academic, Professional, and Community Service:  

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• President, The Historical Society (2006-2008)
• Treasurer, Immigration and Ethnic History Society (2006-2009)
• Lecturer, Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lectureship Program (2006-2007)
• Faculty Participant, Study of the United States Institute for Secondary Educators (UIC/U.S. Department of State), Summer 2007
• Co-Chair, All-Campus Promotion and Tenure Committee, University of Illinois at Chicago, 2006-2007
• External Departmental Evaluator, Department of History, Northeastern Illinois University, April 2007
• Member, Program Committee, June 2008 Conference of The Historical Society in Baltimore, Maryland, 2007-2008
• Panelist/Reviewer, Kluge Fellowship Competition of the Library of Congress/National Endowment for the Humanities, February 6, 2007
• Chair, Wesley-Logan Book Prize in Diaspora History Committee, American Historical Association and the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History, 2004-2005
• Member, External Review Committee of the History PhD program at Northeastern University, January 2005
• Member, Wesley-Logan Book Prize in Diaspora History Committee, American Historical Association and the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History, 2002-2004
• Member, Executive Board, Immigration and Ethnic History Society, 2002-2005
• Co-Chair, Latin American and Latino Studies Program Directorship Search Committee, University of Illinois at Chicago, 2004-2005
• Associate Editor, Labor: Studies in Working Class History of the Americas, 2006-
• Contributing Editor, Labor: Studies in Working Class History of the Americas, 2003-2006
• Contributing Editor, Labor History, 2001-2003
• Member, Board of Consulting Editors, International Labor and Working-Class History, 1997-
• Advisory Board, Footsteps: African-American History, 2003- (children's history magazine)
• Advisory Board, Cobblestone, 2003- (children's history magazine)
• Member, Eugene Genovese Book Prize Committee, The Historical Society, 2003-2004
• Member, Richard Wentworth History Prize Committee (University of Illinois Press), 2004
• Member, Francis B. Simkins Book Award Committee, Southern Historical Association,
  2001-2003
• Member, Steering Committee, Chicago Center for Working-Class Studies, 2001-2003
• Member, Committee on Internships, Fellowships, and Research Awards, The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, Springfield, IL, 2001-2002
• Member, Program Committee for the 2002 Biannual Southern Labor Studies Conference, Miami, Florida, 2001-2002
• Panelist/Reviewer, National Endowment for the Humanities, University Fellowship Proposals, July 2003
• Member, Program Committee for the Annual Meeting of the Southern Historical Association for the Year 2000
• Panelist/Reviewer, National Endowment for the Humanities, Division of Public Programs, February 1998
• Panelist/Reviewer, National Endowment for the Humanities, Division of Public Programs,
  April 1996
• Panelist/Reviewer, National Endowment for the Humanities, Projects in Media, Spring 1994
• Member, Executive Committee, Department of History, Fall 1998-Spring 2000
• Chair, Art, Architecture, and Humanities Research Fellowship Committee, Office for the Vice Chancellor for Research and Institute for the Humanities, 1997-2000
• Chair, Fine Arts and Humanities Subcommittee, UIC Campus Research Board, 1996-1997
• Chair, UIC University Scholars Selection Committee, Spring 1999
• Member, UIC University Scholars Selection Committee, Spring 1997, Spring 1998
• Member, Fine Arts and Humanities Subcommittee, UIC Campus Research Board, 1993-1996
• Executive Board Member, UIC Institute for the Humanities, 1996-2000
• Member, UIC University Graduate Awards Committee, 1994-1997
• Member, Native American Studies Search Committee, The Newberry Library and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago, 2001-2002
• Chair, Teacher Education Search Committee, UIC Department of History, 1997-1998
• Member, Senior Progressive Era Search Committee, UIC Department of History, 1999-2000
• Member, UIC African-American Studies Department Headship Search Committee, 1996-1997, 1997-1998
• Chair, UIC African-American History Search Committee, 1994-1995, 1995-1996
• Member, UIC Black History Month Committee, 1993-1994
• Associate Head, UIC African-American Studies Department, August 1995-July 1996
• Internal UIC Evaluator, NEH Summer Stipend Applications, for Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, 1996-1997, 1997-1998, 1998-1999

Article Referee for Journal of the Historical Society, Journal of Southern History, Journal of American History, American Historical Review, Journal of Policy History, International Review of Social History, Chicago History, American Quarterly, Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas, Rethinking History, Labor History, Radical History Review, International Labor and Working-Class History, Annals of Iowa, Alabama Review, Journal of American Ethnic History, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Journal of the Historical Society, and Journal of Historical Sociology

Manuscript Reviewer for Johns Hopkins University Press,Cambridge University Press, University of Chicago Press, Cornell University Press, University of North Carolina Press, University of California Press, Harvard University Press, Princeton University Press, University of Illinois Press, University of Oklahoma Press, University of Georgia Press, Bedford/St. Martin's, W.W. Norton, and Houghton Mifflin


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Department of History