Degrees
Samir Sonti is a historian of U.S. labor and political economy. Prior to arriving at SLU, he held various roles in the labor movement, and since 2019 he has been the Books & Arts editor of New Labor Forum. Dr. Sonti’s current book project examines the politics of inflation in the United States in the twentieth century. Most recently, he is co-editor (with Nelson Lichtenstein) of Labor’s Partisans: Essential Writings on the Union Movement from the 1950s to Today (The New Press, 2025).
Recent News
- B.A. University of Pennsylvania, 2009 (Political Science)
- B.S. University of Pennsylvania, 2009 (Economics)
- Ph.D. University of California, Santa Barbara, 2017 (History)
Research
- Effects of financialization on working conditions
- Labor and employment policy
- Historical political economy
Publications
- Labor’s Partisans: Essential Writings on the Union Movement from the 1950s to Today (New York: The New Press, 2025).
- “‘One Dedicated, Single-Minded Staff Aide’: John M. Blair and Institutional Keynesianism in Postwar U.S. Economic Policy,” Journal of Policy History 37, no. 2 (2025): 90-113.
- “Sorting Out the Politics of Inflation, Past and Present,” in Nick Juravich and Steve Striffler, The Pandemic and the Working-Class: How U.S. Labor Navigated COVID-19 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2025).
- “The Strange Career of Institutional Keynesianism,” in Romain Huret, Nelson Lichtenstein, and Jean-Christian Vinel eds., Capitalism Contested: The New Deal and its Legacies (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020)
- “Conflict and Consensus: The Steel Strike of 1959 and the Anatomy of the New Deal Order,” Critical Historical Studies 4, no. 1 (2017): 39-73 (co-authored with Kristoffer Smemo and Gabriel Winant)
Course Taught
- LABR 601: U.S. Labor History
- LABR 607: Labor and the Economy
- PADM 611: U.S. Social and Economic Policy
- LBR 201: Introduction to Labor Studies
- URB 301: Introduction to U.S. Social and Economic Policy
Areas of Experience
- Social and economic policy
- Financialization
- Inequality
- Twentieth-century United States
- Labor and working-class history
Grants and Awards
- PSC Research Award
- Washington Center for Equitable Growth Grant for Junior Scholars
- Dirksen Congressional Research Grant
- University of California Group in Economic History Research Fellowship
Boards and Organizations
- Debs-Jones-Douglass Institute Working Group on Policy in the Public Good
- Labor and Working-Class History Association
- United Association of Labor Educators
- Professional Staff Congress-CUNY
