Laurence Gross

My teaching interests include the relationships between labor, technology, and capital, their organization and management, across time and regions. Generally my courses could be described as industrial history, although I also have interests in early work and industry's portrayal in American Literature. Consequences of industrial change for the larger society is a focus of all my work.

I have written extensively on issues of skill, technology, and their management, along with industrial mobility, especially in the textile industry, most recently in The Course of Industrial Decline: The Boott Cotton Mills of Lowell, Massachusetts, 1835-1955. After treating this prototypical Lowell corporation and its flight, my current work involves similar issues as revealed in a history of Malden Mills in Lawrence, Mass., a company that has chosen a different set of relationships and remains in the Northeast.

I previously worked in museums as a curator and as a consultant. I present to groups interested in various aspects of industrial history: technology, labor, industrial archeology, and their interpretation by museums.