John LEAR

I grew up in a working-class family in the Midwest of the United States. As a first-generation college student on fellowship at Harvard, I was acutely aware of class and cultural differences among students. My college years were interrupted by periods of travel and manual labor in factories, restaurants and farms in France. After graduation in the 1980s, I did political and agricultural work in Nicaragua and organized to oppose US policy in Central America. My graduate school years were interspersed with outside intellectual work as a travel writer, a researcher at the Institute of Food and Development Policy, and an analyst for Ford Foundation poverty programs in Peru. These experiences shaped the interest in labor history that I have pursued since my doctoral program at the University of California at Berkeley.

I have taught at the University of Puget Sound, a small liberal arts college, since 1993 and have welcomed the opportunities to teach across disciplines. I maintain an ambitious, interdisciplinary research agenda that has repeatedly drawn me to Mexico for research and two extended Fulbright Fellowship residencies. I value my close ties with the Mexican scholarly and activist communities, including the independent electricians’ union (SME).