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Our Daily Work / Our Daily Lives
Work shapes our lives. When we meet strangers,
our first question is "what do you do?" We are not asking
about their non-work activities as much as we want to understand one
of the most important ways of defining ourselves and others: what we
and they do as "work."
Both on and off the job, we explore the effect work has on us and how
we affect our work. We talk, complain, celebrate and struggle. Our relationship
to work is not only economic and social, it is cultural as well. Our
personal and communal relations to work take many cultural and artistic
forms expressed through poetry and narrative, sculpture and painting,
humor and drama, craft and representation. Through expressive culture,
we integrate our occupation and personal life. "Our Daily Work/
Our Daily Lives" is a cooperative project that focuses on the cultural
traditions of workers, workplaces as contexts for the expression of
workers culture, and the diversity of historical and artistic presentations
of workers' lives. Acting out of common interest, the Michigan Traditional
Arts Program ( MSU Museum) and the Labor
Education Program (MSU School of Labor and Industrial Relations)
established "Our Daily Work/Our Daily Lives" to explore and
present the richness and diversity of worker experience and workers
culture with exhibits, lectures and presentations; writing and research
projects; and reunions, dialogues, demonstrations and discussions.
"Our Daily Work/Our Daily Lives" received a
university's Sustained Effort Toward Excellence in Diversity award in 2003.
Diversity has been a hallmark of the "Our Daily Work/Our Daily Lives" program,
co-directed by John P. Beck and Yvonne R. Lockwood, since its inception more than a
decade ago. The collaboration between the School of Labor and Industrial Relations and
the MSU Museum is dedicated to the exploration, preservation, and presentation of the
richness and complexity available within "worker culture." While program presentations have
included poetry readings, a film opening, and a concert, the most visible activities were
three major campus exhibits: the paintings of worker/artist Ralph Fasanella, the art of
African American artist and former rail worker Mark Priest, and the memorial quilt honoring
federal workers killed in the Oklahoma City bombing. Lockwood and Beck are conducting field
research on South African worker culture for inclusion in an upcoming exhibition. The
program's diversity focus is also reflected in the presentations offered through the brown
bag seminar series in which MSU faculty and off-campus presenters focus on the diversity of
worker experience and worker culture across the boundaries of occupation, gender, ethnicity,
age, region, nation, and time.
Our Daily Work/Our Daily Lives has been described as a program designed to transform the
perceptions and understanding of the greater institution and our student community by
establishing a forum for understanding diversity of people in our daily lives. It celebrates
diversity through an understanding of the richness and value diversity adds to our daily
lives. This program has demonstrated an organizational culture that not only respects
diversity and pluralism, but also one that establishes diversity and pluralism.
Lockwood and Beck are a team that represents in an exceptional way efforts deserving of the
Sustained Effort Toward Excellence in Diversity award.
Brown Bag Presentations
Winter 2009:
Scott Peller
Department of English, Wayne State University
"Proletarian Writer Robert Cruden in 1930's Detroit:
The Aspirations of a Mass Worker"
Friday, January 23, 2009
12:15-1:30
MSU Museum Auditorium
Lisa Rutledge and
Oakwood Healthcare System Employee Writers
"Writing as Healing for the Healers:
A Reading and Presentation"
Thursday, January 29, 2009
12:15-1:30
MSU Radiology Auditorium
This talk is co-sponsored by the MSU
Center for Ethics in Humanities in the Life Sceinces
Dylan Miner
MSU Residential College in the Arts and Humanities
"Joe Hill Ain't Dead!: Wobbly Visual Culture and
Its Impact on Contemporary Radical Graphics"
Friday, February 6, 2009
12:15-1:30
MSU Museum Auditorium
Richard Fry
Department of History, Wayne State University
"Toxic Crisis in 21st Century Alang:
Contaminants, Workers, and Community in
India's Ship Breaking Industry"
Friday, February 20, 2009
12:15-1:30
MSU Museum Auditorium
Bump Halbritter and Julie Lindquist
MSU Department of Writing, Rhetoric and American Culture
"Making Meaning on Both Sides of the Literacy Tracks:
The Voices of First Year Students at Michigan State University"
Friday, March 27, 2009
12:15-1:30
MSU Museum Auditorium
Elizabeth Faue
Department of History, Wayne State University
"Remembering Justice: Labor and the Uses of Memory"
Monday, March 30, 2009
12:15-1:30
MSU Museum Auditorium
Si Kahn
Folksinger, Writer and Social Justice Advocate and Organizer
"A Conversation with Si Kahn"
Friday, April 10, 2009
12:15-1:30
MSU Library, Room 449W
Please contact John Beck at 432-3982 or Yvonne Lockwood
at 353-9678 for more information about future brown bag seminars or
other "Our Daily Work/Our Daily Lives" activities.
The “Our Daily Work/Our Daily Lives” Brown Bag Series
(A Retrospective by School Year)
2008-2009
9/12/08-Walter Hawthorne
Black Slave Ship Crew: Labor, Bondage and Freedom in the Early Modern
South Atlantic
9/19/08-Tamar Carrol
Working-Class Women and Feminism in 1970s Brooklyn
10/23/08-Beth Stewart
The First Rosie the Riveters: The Women of Henry Ford's Phoenix
Mill, 1922-1948
11/14/08-Denver Brunsman
Laboring Under the Union Jack: British Naval Impressment in the
Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World
11/21/08-Rosemary Feurer
Mother Jones and the Radical Tradition
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2007-2008
9/21/07-Stephen Rachman
Flash!: Jacob Riis, Social Class, and the Photography of Artificial
Illumination
10/15/07-Thomas F. Marvin
Joe Hill and the Making of a Labor Martyr
11/9/07-Heather E. Pristash
Reclaiming Women's Work: Feminism and Protest Knitting
11/12/07-Howard Bossen
Poverty and Wealth in Black and White: Marion Post Wolcott, FSA
Photographer
12/3/07-Juan Javier Pescador
Detroit-Tenochtitlan: Utopia, Myth and History in Diego Rivera's
Translational Art
3/14/08-Dionicio Valdes
The Search for Democracy: Plantation Agriculture in Hawaii and the
ILWU
4/4/08-Jualynne E. Dodson
Spiritual Work in Cuba: Political-economy of Religion and Tourism
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2006-2007
9/15/06-Daniel Bender
Fit for the Factory: Race, Gender, and Evolutionary Thought in the
Early 20th Century
10/20/06-Peter Alegi
Rewriting Patriarchal Scripts: Trade Union Beauty Pagents in the South
African Textile Industry, 1970s-Present
12/1/06-Daina Ramey Berry
'Reap in the Harvest What YOu Sow.' New Directions in Slavery Scholarship
2/9/07-Coreen Derifield
Negotiating the American Dream: Industrial Manufacturing and Working
Class Community in Burlington, Iowa, 1960-1980
3/12/07-Susan J. Bandes
American Images and the Workers' Lanscape
4/6/07-Doug Rademacher
Life and Work in the Shadow of the Verlinden Plant: UAW Local 602
Oral History Project
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2005-2006
9/24/05- Howard Bossen
Behind the Big Top: Luke Swank's Photographs of the Working Circus
108 Kresge Art Center
10/21/05- Ken Ross and Louis Galdieri
1913 Massacre': The Woody Guthrie Song and the Michigan Copper Strike
Tradgedy that Inspired It
11/11/05- Lisa Fine
Laying Claim to the Land: Exploring the Relationship of Workers,
Leisure and the Environment
12/2/05- Phil Schertzing
Whacking the Wobblies: The Michigan State Police vs. the IWW, 1917-1922
back
2004-2005
9/9/04- LuAnne Kozma
Smiling through Danger on the River: Worker Humor on the Westcott Mail
Boat
10/5-Dolores Huerta
A Conversation with Dolores Huerta.
4th Floor Conference Room, MSU Library
10/21/04 - Douglas Noverr
Dirty Uniforms, Dirty Money, Dirty Business:Labor and Class as Elements
of Baseball's Black Sox Scandal
11/12/04 - Wilson Warren
‘I’m Glad I’m Not a Hog’: Workers’
Lives and the Ethics of Animal Slaughter
12/6/04 - Rossina Hassoun
The Kufiyya and the Smokestack: The Lives of Working Class Arab
Americans in the Midwest
1/21/05 - David Stowe and Derek Vaillant
Sweet Home Chicago: Work and Spirit in the Music of 20th Century
Chicago
2/1/05 - Maria Montoya
Work, Women, and Wobblies: The IWW Strikes in Colorado's Coal Fields,
1927
3/18/05 - Lolita Hernandez
Living and Writing the Pulse and Rhythm of the Line: One Autoworking
Woman's Experience
This presentation was co-sponsored by the Motorcities/Automobile
National Heritage Area/Lansing Area Stewardship Community.
4/1/05 - Gregory Miller
Fighting the Blue Collar Blues: The 'Guerrilla War' at GM's Lordstown
Plant, 1971-1972
This presentation was co-sponsored by the Motorcities/Automobile
National Heritage Area/Lansing Area Stewardship Community.
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2003-2004
9/4/03 - Danielle DeVoss
Formidable Females: Cultures of Resistance in the Pink Collar Workplace
10/16/03 - Jim Daniels and Larry Smith
Writing and Publishing Our Working Lives
11/3/03 - Teresa Pool
You Feel Like a Psychiatrist Sometimes: Emotional Labor in a Chain
Hair Salon
1/16/04 - Cynthia Vagnetti
The Other Toiler on the Farm: From 'Go Fer' to 'You Go Girl'
2/2/04 - Ann Larabee
The Technologies of Revolution: Radical Bombmaking in 19th Century
America
3/1/04 - Marietta Baba
Anthropology on Work/Anthropology at Work: The Workplace as a Terrain
of Anthropological Inquiry
4/2/04 - Sherry Linkon and John Russo
Steeltown USA: Rethinking the Study of Class and Place
4/15/04 - Tim Sheard
Union Work Can Be Murder: A Mystery Novelist Shop Steward Detective
Blends Fact and Fiction
back
2002-2003
9/13/02 - Kimberly Little
Blitzkrieg on the Waterfront: Competing Visions of Businessmen and
Everyday People for St. Louis, 1900 - 1940
10/4/02 - Anna Pegler-Gordon
Imagining and Imaging Immigrants: Photographing Chinese and Mexican
Laborers in the United States, 1880- 1930
This presentation was co-sponsored by MSU’s Julian
Samora Research Institute and MSU’s Chicano/Latino Studies Program.
11/4/02 - Charles Blackman, Sandra Clark and Arthur Mullen
Celebrating Michigan's Autoworkers, Automobiles and Auto Communities:
The Program of the Automobile National Heritage Area
12/2/02 - Joe Grimm
Great Lakes Sailors, Their Work and Songs in the Schooner Era
1/24/03 - Julie Lindquist
Telling Shit from Shinola: The Culture of Argument in a Working
Class Bar
2/24/03 - Howard Bossen
Lost Childhood: Lewis Hine, Child Labor and the Progressive Era
3/14/03 - Darlene Morris and Lynn Marie Smith
Music in Work Life and Union Life
4/25/03 - Jocelyn Riley
Work Talk: Filming Women in Non-traditional Careers in Their Own
Words
This presentation was co-sponsored
by the Women’s Resource Center and the Women’s Studies program.
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2001-2002
9/10/01 - Julian Van Dyke
Images and Letters from the Lost Delivery Person
10/15/01 - Andrea Stupka
Vistas Del Campo: The Photography and Writing of Migrant Workers'
Children
This presentation was co-sponsored by MSU’s Julian
Samora Research Institute and MSU’s Chicano/Latino Studies Program.
11/19/01 - Manuel Pena
Folklore, Machismo and Everyday Life: Writing Mexican Worker Culture
This presentation was co-sponsored by MSU’s Julian
Samora Research Institute and MSU’s Chicano/Latino Studies Program.
11/26/01 - Elena Herrada and Others
Los Repatriados: Exiles from the Promised Land
This presentation was co-sponsored by MSU’s Julian
Samora Research Institute and MSU’s Chicano/Latino Studies Program.
1/17/02 - Peter Way
Belaboring Military History, Militarizing Labor History
2/15/02 - Thomas F. Adams
The Rise and Fall of Buick City
3/18/02 - Matthew Daley
Welcome to the Boomtown: Building a New Worker Community in Detroit,
Brightmoor, 1922 - 1942
4/8/02 - Isaac Kalumbu and Michael Largey
Music and Class in the United States, Haiti and Zimbabwe
back
2000-2001
9/18/00 - Steve Germic
Building New York's Central Park and Blunting Class Conflict in
the 1850's
10/12/00 - Steve Rohs
Irish Working Class Riots, Music and Performance: New York in 1871
11/16/00 - Patricia Cuza
Work, Culture and Ethnic Identity: the Romanian Americans of Massillon,
Ohio
12/7/00 - Marsha MacDowell
Quilts as an Expression of Working Class Life
1/22/01 - Daina Ramey
For the Current Year: Slave Hiring, Market Relations, and the Law
in Upcountry Georgia
2/26/01 - Nora Chapa Mendoza
Expressing Labor through Art
This presentation was co-sponsored by MSU’s Julian
Samora Research Institute and MSU’s Chicano/Latino Studies Program.
3/19/01 - Ric Schaarfsma
Cop Art
4/16/01 - Michael Johnston
Stones under their Skirts: The 1911 Grand Rapids Furniture Strike
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1999-2000
9/16/99 - Kevin Asman
British Film, Mike Leigh and the Poitics of Working class Embodiment
10/14/99 - John P. Beck
Exploring South African Workers Culture and Art
12/9/99 - John Dirkx
Spirituality of Work: The New Opiate or a Modern Quest for Meaning
in Life
1/31/00 - Vivian Scott Hixson
Cartooning the Academic Life
1998-1999
2/24/99 - Rick Houghton
What's Under the Helmet?: Life on the Job as a Firefighter
3/24/99 - Susan Stein-Roggenbuck
Michigan Workers Without Work in the 1930's: The View from Van Buren
County
4/21/99 - Nancy Brigham, Eric Freedman and Louise Knott
Journalistic Labor: Writers Working/Workers Writing
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1997-1998
9/26/97 - Richard Olson
Touring the Labor Museums of America
10/14/97 - Luanne Kozma and Yvonne Lockwood
Capturing the Fire: Field Research with Michigan Firefighters
11/14/97 - Lisa Fine
Killing Informants; What to Do with the Results of the REO Factory
Oral History Project?
1996-1997
9/20/96 - Yvonne Lockwood and
John P. Beck
In Search of a Workers’ Culture in the United States
10/21/96 - Paul Mishler
Workers Stories into Labor Culture: The Experience of the Bread
and Roses Conference on Workers' Culture
11/21/96 - Clarence Hooker
Reminiscences from the Model T Assembly Line
4/17/97 - Elizabeth Davey
Stop Talking Poetry and Talk Sense: Political Poetry in Defense
of the Scottsboro Boys
3/20/97 - Nora Roberts and Others
A Poetry Reading by Michigan Worker/Writers
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