On March 25, 1911, a fire broke out in the Triangle Waist Company factory in Greenwich Village, New York. Located on the top three floors of a 10-story building, the fire killed 146 workers in a mere 15 minutes. Most victims were Jewish and Italian immigrant women and girls, between the ages of 14 and 23. The tragedy is considered the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of New York City.
Dr. Mary Anne Trasciatti, Professor of Rhetoric and Public Advocacy and Director of Labor Studies at Hofstra University, will present selections from her new edited work, Talking to the Girls: Intimate and Political Essays on the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, alongside co-contributor Ellen Wiley Todd, Associate Professor Emerita of Art History, Cultural Studies, and Women and Gender Studies at George Mason University. A powerful collection of diverse voices, Talking to the Girls brings together stories from writers, artists, activists, scholars, and family members of the Triangle workers. One hundred and eleven years after the tragic incident, Talking to the Girls articulates a story of contemporary global relevance and stands as an act of collective testimony: a written memorial to the Triangle victims.
NCHGS’s Community Engagement Coordinator, Sarah White, will give a brief overview of Northampton County’s deep connections to the garment industry before joining Dr. Trasciatti in conversation. Dr. Trasciatti will illuminate the daily lives of immigrant women in New York in the early 20th century, and how the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire impacted the movement for workers’ rights.
This program will take place virtually on March 22, 2022 via Zoom, at 4:30 pm. Registration is required and Pay As You Wish.
About Mary Anne Trasciatti:
Mary Anne Trasciatti (co-editor) is Professor of Rhetoric and Public Advocacy and Director of Labor Studies at Hofstra University. She is also president of Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition. She is completing a book on the civil liberties activism of radical labor organizer Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and is co-editor of the forthcoming anthology Where Are the Workers?: Labor’s Stories at Museums and Historical Sites (Univ. of Illinois Press, June 2022). Since 2010, she has helped organize the annual official Triangle fire commemoration. She has led the project to build the Triangle Fire Memorial, scheduled for dedication in 2023. When installed in March 2023, it will be the first labor memorial and one of only a handful of memorials to women in New York City.
About Ellen Wiley Todd:
Ellen Wiley Todd (contributor) is Associate Professor Emerita of Art History, Cultural Studies, and Women and Gender Studies at George Mason University, and a former museum studies course instructor for the Smith College program in Washington, DC. She is the author of The “New Woman” Revised: Painting and Gender Politics on Fourteenth Street (1993). She has been writing and presenting on the Triangle fire and on Ernest Fiene’s murals in New York’s High School of Fashion Industries. Her work considers how individual producers and groups, and viewers of their work, have engaged with historical memory and the politics of visual representation. Her writings on the Triangle fire include “Photojournalism, Visual Culture, and the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire,” published in Labor: Studies in Working Class History of the Americas (2005) and “Remembering the Unknowns: The Longman Memorial and the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Fire,” published in American Art (2009).