Faculty and Staff
James R. Barrett
Professor of History
Professor Barrett specializes in U.S. and comparative working-class history and class, race, and ethnicity in twentieth-century U.S. social history. He is the author of William Z. Foster and the Tragedy of American Radicalism (University of Illinois Press, 2000, paper, 2001); Work and Community in The Jungle: Chicago's Packinghouse Workers, 1894-1922 (University of Illinois Press, 1987, paper 1990); “The Blessed Virgin Made Me a Socialist Historian: An Experiment in Autobiography and the Historiography of Race and Class,” in Faith in History, Nick Salvatore, Ed. (University of Illinois Press, 2006); and (with David Roediger) “The Irish and the ‘Americanization’ of the ‘New Immigrants’ in the Streets and Churches of the Urban United States, 1900-1930,” Journal of American Ethnic History 24:3 (Summer 2005): 3-33. His current research interests focus on racial and ethnic identity and relations in working class communities and the relationship between personal and historical experience. Professor Barrett received his doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh in 1981.