Nathan Godfried

Professor Emeritus of History
History

My teaching specialties were in twentieth and twenty-first-century U.S. history and the history of
the modern Middle East. I have research interests in the history of mass communication, U.S.
labor history, film history, and U.S. political history.

“Social Unionism and the Popular Front: The Cambridge Union of University Teachers, 1935-1941,” Left History, 24, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 2021-22): 42-76.

“Organic Intellectuals and Working-Class Organizing: The Case of Sarainne Loewe, 1920-38,” Journal for the Study of Radicalism, 15:1 (Spring 2021): 37-74.

“‘Voice of the People’: Sidney Roger, the Labor/Left, and Broadcasting in San Francisco, 1945-1950, American Communist History, 18:1-2 (March-June 2019): 56-78.

“Between Human Welfare and National Security:  William S. Gailmor and Popular Front Journalism in the Cold War, 1950-1952,” American Journalism, 34:2 (Spring 2017):  152-178.

“Labor Sponsored Film and Working-Class History: The Inheritance (1964),” Film History:  An International Journal, 26:4 (2014).

“Labor,” in The Handbook of Communication History (New York:  Routledge, 2013), edited by Peter Simonson, Janice Peck, Robert T. Craig, and John Jackson, Jr., pp. 315-330.

“‘Love That AFL-CIO’:  Organized Labor’s Use of Television, 1950-1970,” in A Moment of Danger: Critical Studies in the History of U.S. Communications Since World War II, (Milwaukee, WI:  Marquette University Press, 2011), edited by Janice Peck and Inger Stoler, pp. 153-177.

“Fellow Traveler, Organic Intellectual: J. Raymond Walsh and Radio News Commentary in the 1940s,” Democratic Communique, 22:2 (Fall 2008): 19-45.

“Revising Labor History for the Cold War: The ILGWU and the Film, With These Hands,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 28:3 (August 2008): 311-333″

‘Fellow Traveler of the Air’: Rod Holmgren and Leftist Radio News Commentary in America’s Cold War,” The Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 24:2 (June 2004): 233-51.

“Identity, Power, and Local Television: African Americans, Organized Labor, and UHF-TV in Chicago, 1962-1968,” The Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 22:2 (June 2002).

“Struggling over Politics and Culture: Organized Labor and Radio Station WEVD During the 1930s,” Labor History, 42:4 (November 2001): 347-69. (Recipient of 2002 Cathy Covert Award from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, History Division).

Books

WCFL, Chicago’s Voice of Labor, 1926-1978 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997).

Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor: American Economic Development Policy Toward the Arab East, 1942-1949 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1987).

Work in Progress

  • “Fellow Travelers of the Air, 1940-1960,” a study of leftist and radical journalists and broadcasters in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s.
  • Radical and labor uses of the mass media in the twentieth century.

Education

PH.D. University of Wisconsin, Madison
Portrait of Nathan Godfried
Professor Emeritus of History