Jennifer Klein
Jennifer Klein is a Professor in the field of 20th Century US history. She earned her PhD at the University of Virginia and first came to Yale as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation fellow in Health Policy.
Professor Klein’s research spans the fields of U.S. labor history, urban history, social movements and political economy. Her publications include the book For All These Rights: Business, Labor, and the Shaping of America’s Public-Private Welfare State (Princeton, 2003) which was awarded the Ellis W. Hawley Prize in Political History/Political Economy from the Organization of American Historians and The Hagley Prize in Business History from the Business History Conference. Writing about the intersection between labor politics and the welfare state, she has written articles on the history of health care policy, Social Security, pensions, collective bargaining and New Deal liberalism, including “The Politics of Economic Security: Employee Benefits and the Privatization of New Deal Liberalism,” published in the “Journal of Policy History”. She is co-director of the Initiative on Labor and Culture with Michael Denning and is affiliated with the History of Science & Medicine and Women’s Studies programs.
She is currently working on a project on the history of home health care workers, exploring the links between public welfare, health care, and employment law. Her most recent book, Caring for America: How Home Health Workers Changed the Face of the Labor (Oxford University Press, 2012), co-authored with Eileen Boris, was awarded the 2012 Sarah Whalley Book Prize from the National Women’s Studies Association. Their articles on home care workers, long term care and labor organizing include: “Organizing Home Care: Low-Waged Workers in the Welfare State” in Politics and Society (March 2006); “We Were the Invisible Workforce: Unionizing Home Care” in The Sex of Class: Women Transforming American Labor, ed. Dorothy Sue Cobble (ILR/Cornell Press, 2007), and ”Laws of Care: The Supreme Court and Aides to Elderly People” in Dissent (Fall 2007).
She is also on the Editorial Board of the journal International Labor and Working Class History. She recently edited a special issue of ILWCH, The Class Politics of Privitization: Global Perspectives on the Privitization of Public Workers, Land, and Services No. 71 (Spring 2007).
She teaches courses in labor history, 20th century political economy, urban history, and contemporary America, 1945-Present.
WGSS 132 Amer Politics & Society 1945-Present
WGSS 428 Labor & Democracy in 20th C US