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There is something predictable in hearing a political scientist preach the virtue of political science. But in Ira's case there is also something personal, even poignant—for just below the surface of his remarks there runs a stream of self-consciousness about how he made it through the academic battles of the 1980s. Many of us have been harboring our own reflections about what happened, letting go only with occasional irritated book reviews or with diatribes in the faculty lounge. Ira opens up the conversation and sets a welcome, candid tone.

AbstractIn the Arabic-speaking mahjar (diaspora), the plight of the working poor was the focus of women's philanthropy. Scholarship on welfare relief in the interwar Syrian, Lebanese, and Palestinian diaspora currently situates it within a gendered politics of benevolence. This article reconsiders that frame and argues for a class-centered reassessment of "ladies aid" politics exploring the intersections of women's relief with proletarian mutual aid strategies. Founded in 1917, the Syrian Ladies Aid Society (SLAS) of Boston provided food, shelter, education, and employment to Syrian workers. SLAS volunteers understood their efforts as mitigating the precarities imposed on Syrian workers by the global capitalist labor system. Theirs was both a women's organization and a proletarian movement led by Syrian women. Drawing from SLAS records and the Syrian American press, the article centers Syrian American women within processes of working-class formation and concludes that labor history of the interwar mahjar requires focus on spaces of social reproduction beyond the factory floor.

Abstract In the Arabic-speaking mahjar (diaspora), the plight of the working poor was the focus of women's philanthropy. Scholarship on welfare relief in the interwar Syrian, Lebanese, and Palestinian diaspora currently situates it within a gendered politics of benevolence. This article reconsiders that frame and argues for a class-centered reassessment of "ladies aid" politics exploring the intersections of women's relief with proletarian mutual aid strategies. Founded in 1917, the Syrian Ladies Aid Society (SLAS) of Boston provided food, shelter, education, and employment to Syrian workers. SLAS volunteers understood their efforts as mitigating the precarities imposed on Syrian workers by the global capitalist labor system. Theirs was both a women's organization and a proletarian movement led by Syrian women. Drawing from SLAS records and the Syrian American press, the article centers Syrian American women within processes of working-class formation and concludes that labor history of the interwar mahjar requires focus on spaces of social reproduction beyond the factory floor.

This article examines papers presented at the "Beyond 'Free' and 'Unfree' Labor" Conference held at the University of Illinois at Chicago in April 2016. It extracts salient themes and questions about the status of labor history in the growing field of the history of capitalism. Topics discussed include the role of the state in the economy, tensions concerning the separation of the so-called private and public spheres, and changes to labor regimes over time.