Each year since 2008, the Labor and Working-Class History Association (LAWCHA) has sponsored the Herbert Gutman Dissertation Prize in cooperation with the University of Illinois Press. Named to honor one of the founders of what came to be called the “New Labor History,” the prize recognizes an outstanding dissertation in the field and includes a cash award, recognition at LAWCHA’s annual meeting, and a contract to publish the work in the University of Illinois Press’s The Working Class in American History series. This year’s competition was a little unusual. In earlier years, committees received an average of around ten or twelve dissertations, sometimes fewer. This year’s group included twenty-five dissertations, far more than any year in the past. The increase might be due in part to more effective advertising, but the explanation seems to involve more than that.
The group was unusual not only in size, but also in the...
