Dr. Ryan S. Pettengill holds a PhD in American history from Michigan State University, a degree he earned in 2009. Since that point, he has worked as a professor of history at the University of Texas at Dallas, teaching a wide array of courses, which include but are not limited to both halves of the American history survey, the history of sport in the United States, the civil rights movement, and labor and working-class history. Pettengill has over 18 years of experience in the classroom, has been recognized as an “engaged faculty” member by both students and administrators, and currently serves as a member of the Organization of American Historians’ Committee on Community Colleges.
Pettengill’s research interests include labor and working-class history as well the history of human rights in the United States, which informs his interest in the history of organized crime. Throughout the course of the history of the labor movement, there have been times when organized crime has intersected with organized labor. Further, what came to be known as the “mob,” the “Mafia,” or the “Syndicate” was grounded in human experiences with poverty, social inequality, and life at the point of production, thus
making labor history and the history of organized crime natural partners when it comes to the study of this element of the American past.
Pettengill’s recent book, Communists and Community: Activism in Detroit’s Labor Movement (Temple University Press, 2020) adds to the understanding of the central role played by Communists in the advancement of social democracy throughout the mid-twentieth century. Pettengill’s work also extends into the realm of working-class culture. In 2018 he published “‘Fair Play in Bowling’: Sport, Civil Rights, and the UAW Culture of Inclusion, 1936-1950” in the Journal of Social History. His current research project involves the intersection of organized labor and the international human rights movement of the 1990s.