Leon Fink (historian) - Research Focus

Research Focus

Fink is considered a top scholar in U.S. and comparative labor history. He is an expert on the history of work, and on labor unions in the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era. More recently, his work has focus on the role of immigration historically and in the modern labor movement. He writes from the perspective of the "new labor history".

In 1991, Fink and UNC professor Lloyd Kramer founded the UNC Project for Historical Education (PHE). The program sponsors workshops on teaching history for elementary and secondary public school social studies teachers. The workshops focus on recent developments in historical research, strategies for integrating research into lesson plans, how to use primary documents in teaching, and other aspects of teaching history.

Fink's 1994 book, In Search of the Working Class: Essays in American Labor History and Political Culture, drew attention for its focus on the role of the historian. The essays in the book highlight the role of the historian as an outside observer of a basic unit of culture and economics as the worker, and what constitutes the "working class." The essays also cover the development of labor history in the United States from its inception in the 1880s as history through the institutionalist period to the "new labor history" period in vogue today. It concludes with an examination of the role history, culture, art and social movements play in American labor history and why scholars must focus on these factors in addition to workers and their organizations.

Fink's second book, 1998's Progressive Intellectuals and the Dilemmas of Democratic Commitment, drew attention in the field of history for its focus on the tension which arises when educated historians study relatively uneducated workers. Using biographies of some of the top labor historians and intellectuals in the field of labor studies, Fink illustrated the problems which can arise when historians try to learn from workers at the same time that they attempt to advise them.

In 1999, Fink established the "Listening for a Change" initiative at the Southern Oral History Program. "Listening for a Change" was designed to conduct oral histories of workers in order to document the on-the-ground history of the working class. In its first year, the program conduced 20 interviews with Guatemalan agricultural workers to illuminate how the influx of Hispanic workers is changing the nature of work in North Carolina.

In 2003, Fink helped establish the journal Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas. Fink had been editor-in-chief of the journal Labor History. In June 2003, Fink and the entire staff left Labor History in a dispute with the journal's publisher, Taylor and Francis. One editorial board member said the publisher wanted to increase the number of issues a year in order to justify an increase in the subscription price, even though the editorial staff felt there were not enough quality articles to fill additional issues.