Personal Statement:
Branden Adams grew up in Pineville, West Virginia. He writes about the intersections between labor and business history in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. His current book project examines the causes and effects of the attempts by the United Mine Workers to take over the coal market by setting prices and wages. He is interested broadly in social history–especially the history of working people–in the United States and their engagement with and subjection to political economy.
Current Projects:
Miners and Antimonopoly in the United States Coal Industry, 1865-1910 (book)
“Cartels, Railroads, and Labor Unions in the era of the Commodity Clause” (article)
“John Brown and the Wool Market: Commerce and Antislavery in the 1840s” (article)
Selected Publications:
“Coalminers and Coordination Rights,” LPEblog, July 19, 2021
“What Tripped Up the Nineteenth-Century Version of Andrew Yang,” Washington Post, June 22, 2021
“Cap and Trade,” interview with Anna Tsing, The New Inquiry, August 31, 2015
Courses Taught:
History 174B – Wealth and Poverty in America (Fall 2020)
History 167CB – Capital and Class in 20th-Century America (Fall 2020)
History 167CA – History of the American Working Class (Winter 2021)
History 178A – American Urban History (Winter 2021)
History 173T – American Environmental History (Spring 2021)