ISO a Third for a "Loss of Services" Panel at OAH 2017

Kim Reilly, University of Wisconsin, Green Bay, and Evelyn Atkinson, University of Chicago, are in search of a third paper for a panel at the Organization of American History meeting in New Orleans in 2017.  Proposals are due in this Friday, January 23.

Our panel examines the relationship between affective bonds and the growth of industrial capitalism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We focus on the law as a site where the human toll of industrial- and transportation-related injuries came to the fore, as judges, litigants, and the broader community negotiated the value of community ties and familial bonds in a market economy. Evelyn Atkinson’s paper looks at damage suits brought on behalf of poor children injured at industrial work sites. Courts debated how to compensate families for the injury and loss of children who were both cherished members of and economic contributors to their families. Kim Reilly’s paper will discuss "loss of services" suits brought by husbands when their wives were injured, as the nature of wives' "services" was redefined from labor to companionship.  Taken as a whole, the panel will explore the conference theme of "Circulation" from two angles: the circulation of capital, human and otherwise, in a market economy; but also circulation as a web of interconnectedness among family and community members that must be negotiated and reformulated in the context of industrial capitalism.

Contact: ematkinson@uchicago.edu