This year marks the 50th anniversary of the publication of one of the most influential books published in the field of social history. E.P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class appeared in 1963. Its impact has been wide-ranging, transforming the study of labour history, and influencing how scholars in a wide array of fields and disciplines interpret their subjects.

Professor Bryan Palmer of Trent's Canadian Studies Department has long been associated with Thompson's influence, bringing to the study of the Canadian working class many of the sensibilities and analytic directions first pioneered in The Making of the English Working Class. With Thompson's death in 1993, Prof. Palmer published the first sustained treatment of Thompson's history and significance, E.P. Thompson: Objections and Oppositions, a book that has been translated into Portuguese and Spanish.

Given Thompson's global influence, 2013 has seen a number of conferences addressing his intellectual legacy and, in particular, the significance of The Making of the English Working Class. Prof. Palmer has presented or will present three keynote addresses at specific commemorative events, two in England and one in Mexico.  He has also addressed other conferences and seminars, including one organized by the Contemporary History Institute at the Universidad Nacional Mayor De San Marcos in Lima, Peru in July 2013.

Prof. Palmer gave his first keynote address, "Paradox and the Thompson 'School of Awkwardness'," at a June 2013 conference, "Fifty Years of E.P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class”, held at Queen Mary University, affiliated with the University of London in London, England. His second keynote address will be delivered October 28, 2013, at a two-day event, "An Encounter with E.P. Thompson," organized by the Humanities Division of the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana de Mexico, bringing together Spanish, Mexican, and Brazilian scholars and inaugurating an ongoing seminar in social history.  This keynote address is titled, "Arguments on All Sides: How The Making of the English Working Class was Made." Finally, at the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Labour History, to be held in Halifax, England, where E.P. Thompson lived and worked in adult education for many years, Prof. Palmer will present a keynote address, "History as Argument: The Contrarian Analytics of The Making of the English Working Class.  At this November 16, 2013 gathering, Prof. Palmer will also help to close the conference on a final plenary discussion panel on the significance and meaning of Thompson's writing and politics, and will present some remarks at the unveiling of a plaque placed on the former residence of Thompson and his wife, Dorothy, also a historian of considerable accomplishment.

In addition to these presentations reflecting on the significance of a major figure in modern historiography, Prof. Palmer has also recently published a new book with the longstanding academic publisher, Brill.  Revolutionary Teamsters: The Minneapolis Truckers' Strikes of 1934, his study of a momentous working-class upheaval in the early depression years, one that paved the way for the organization of mass production unionism in the later 1930s, was released in August 2013, with prepublication praise from historians such as David Roediger, Peter Rachleff, and Mike Davis. The latter has declared the book a "superb micro-history of the Minneapolis General Strike [that] provides readers with an unprecedented view of a Depression-era struggle from the inside out."  A paperback edition of this book will appear with Chicago's Haymarket Press in 2014.

Prof. Palmer, a Canada Research Chair of Canadian Studies, is supported in his research projects by the Canada Research Chairs program and by Trent University and the Canadian Studies Department.

Posted on Wednesday, October 16, 2013.