Melvyn Dubofsky

This biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentially libelous. Find sources: "Melvyn Dubofsky" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (August 2017) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Melvyn Dubofsky (born October 25, 1934) is professor emeritus of history and sociology, and a well-known labor historian. He is Bartle Distinguished Professor of History and Sociology at the Binghamton University.

Dubofsky helped advance the field of "new labor history," which focuses on the experiences of workers and social movements rather than institutions.

[Dubofsky] is one of the five major labour historians who pioneered new approaches to working-class experience in the 1950s and 1960s. Along with Herbert G. Gutman, David Montgomery, David Brody, and Alice Kessler-Harris, Dubofsky researched, wrote about, and taught courses in labour history at a time when the field was not in fashion and there was little appreciation and support for the study of workers and their pasts.^[1]

Since the early 1980s, Dubofsky has written extensively about the role of politics and state action in the changing fortunes of the American labor movement. Dubofsky promotes the theory that labor radicalism emerged from what has been termed a "culture of poverty," and he stresses the role culture and the development of capitalism play in the American labor movement-particularly in the late 19th century.^[2] Dubofsky's research has influenced other scholars, such as Joseph McCartin.^[3] Dubofsky has also worked closely with the Fernand Braudel Center at Binghamton. His research at the center has looked at how changing technology, such as automation, has driven worker activism.