Faculty Profile
Halpern, Rick, Ph.D. Pennsylvania
Professor & Dean and Vice-Principal (Academic) UTSC, St. George Campus
(416) 287-7027
vpdean@utsc.utoronto.ca
Office: Office of the Dean, UTSC
Field: U.S. social history, transnational and comparative history, oral history, labour and working class history
Rick Halpern is the Bissell-Heyd Chair of American Studies and former Director of the Centre for the Study of the United States. He was Principal of New College and is now the Dean at UTSC.
His research interests focus on race and labour in a number of national and transnational contexts. Currently he is at work on a comparative study of migrant and racialized labour in the sugar industries of Louisiana and Natal, South Africa.
His most recent publication, co-edited with Stephen Rockel, is Inventing Collateral Damage: Civilian Casualties, War, and Empire (2009). His other books include Down on the Killing Floor: Black and White Workers in Chicago’s Packinghouses, 1904-1954 (1997); Racializing Class, Classifying Race: Labour and Difference in Britain, the USA, and Africa (2000); The American South and the Italian Mezzogiorno: Essays in Comparative History (2002); and Slavery and Emancipation (2002). He has published articles in a number of journals including the Journal of American History, Social History, Labor History, the Journal of Southern African Studies, and Ethnic and Racial Studies. He supervises students working on a range of topics in African American history, US social history, and transnational labour and working class history.