Charles Williams

I have been teaching at UW Tacoma since 2006. Prior to UW Tacoma, I taught for two years at Ohio State University, Mansfield. In the 1990s, before pursuing my Ph.D. at U.C. Berkeley, I spent five years working on community development projects in San Francisco. I have also been involved in a number of labor and community organizing efforts over the past twenty years.

Classes

I teach courses in American politics and labor studies. My courses are linked by a concern with the nature of political and economic power and the study of how such power is achieved and used over time by conflicting interests in society.

Courses I currently teach at UW Tacoma include Introduction to American Politics, The American Presidency, Community and Labor Organizing in a Multicultural Perspective, Labor Rights and Human Rights, and American Labor since the Civil War.

Current Research

My current research focuses on labor politics and the New Deal. I am particularly interested in the political culture of the CIO and the ways in which the New Deal order both repressed and integrated the labor movement in relation to national politics. I have also recently started research on the labor history and urban development of Tacoma. Recent work includes:

• "Middle ground cities, political-economic stasis, and the politics of alternative urban development" (in progress with Dr. Mark Pendras)
• "Steinbeck as Antifascist" (in progress)
• "Americanism and Anti-Communism: The UAW and Repressive Liberalism before the Red Scare," Labor History (forthcoming).
• "Group Man and the Limits of Working-Class Politics: The Political Vision of Steinbeck's In Dubious Battle," Ambivalent American: The Political Companion to Steinbeck ed. Cyrus Zirakzadeh and Simon Stow (University of Kentucky Press, forthcoming).

Recent Publications

• "Reconsidering CIO Political Culture: Briggs Local 212 and the Sources of Militancy in the Early UAW," Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 2010 7(4).
• "'Illegals' of the World Unite? An Interview with David Bacon," (with Star Murray) Against the Current 141 (July/August 2009).
• "The Making of Jericho Road: An Interview with Michael Honey," Against the Current132 (January / February 2008).
• "The Racial Politics of Progressive Americanism: New Deal Liberalism and the Subordination of Black Workers in the UAW," Studies in American Political Development (Spring 2005).