Gabriel Winant

Gabriel Winant will dedicate his year at CASBS to a reinterpretation of the transformation of US labor markets in the first decades of the twentieth century, the process that occasioned the construction of the welfare state and transformation of urban geography and class relations: in particular, how did rigidifying employment patterns reshape everyday life and social practices of family, leisure, sexuality, etc.? The larger project will bring to bear insights from feminist and queer theory onto questions of labor and political economy to reframe the politics of the welfare state in the twentieth century.

Winant is assistant professor of history at the University of Chicago. His main interests include the history of work and class, political economy, and social policy. His prize-winning first book, The Next Shift: The Fall of Industry and the Rise of Health Care in Rust Belt America, was published by Harvard University Press in 2021 and offered a new account of the origins and meaning of the transition from industrial to service work in the United States. He also regularly contributes to publications such as Dissent, The Nation, and n+1.