with Ryan Murphy, activist/scholar

Associate Professor of History, Earlham College

Tuesday, August 25, 2020, 7:00PM

Via Zoom

Register here for an invitation to the Zoom meeting

The study of labor history is more than the uncovering of untold stories. It also involves the reinterpretation of subjects that we might think we already know. Jimmy Hoffa, President of the International Brotherhood of the Teamsters, became an iconic labor leader in post-World War II America. Loved by some and hated by some, Americans thought they “knew” him through his public visibility. But there is more to his story, and more we can learn about the possibilities and limits of labor activism in that era, if we bring a new set of questions and lenses to our investigations.

Ryan Murphy graduated from Macalester College in 1998 and became a Flight Attendant for United Airlines in San Francisco. He became a Council Representative for the Association of Flight Attendants, only to lose his job in the wake of 9/11. He returned to Minnesota to pursue a graduate degree in American Studies at the University of Minnesota. In 2016, he turned his dissertation into a book, Deregulating Desire: Flight Attendant Activism, Family Politics, and Workplace Justice, which was recognized by the Organization of American Historians as the best labor history book published that year. Ryan brings the lens of gender studies into his research and writing about labor history, with eye-opening and thought-provoking results, results which can lead us not only to look at the past in new ways, but also to think about the present in new ways.

Ryan has offered us an unpublished chapter from book-in-process that analyzes the Teamsters’ Union of the post-WWII period through a new lens. “What If We Had Known About Sylvia Pagano?” explores the domestic and labor movement lives of Jimmy and Josephine Hoffa and their close associate, Sylvia Pagano. Read his essay and join him in an exploration of this cypher, this window into the construction of a union, an identity, a class, and a labor movement.

Free and open to all

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