David R. Roediger (July 13, 1952) is a professor of history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). His research interests include the construction of racial identity, class structures, labor studies, and the history of American radicalism. He writes from a Marxist theoretical framework.
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Roediger was born in 1952 in Columbia, Illinois. He received a bachelor of science degree in education from Northern Illinois University in 1975, and a Ph.D. in history from Northwestern University in 1980, where he wrote a dissertation under the direction of George M. Frederickson.
He was assistant editor of the Frederick Douglass Papers at Yale University from 1979 to 1980.
After receipt of his doctorate, Roediger was a lecturer and assistant professor of history at Northwestern University from 1980 to 1985. He then served as an assistant professor at the University of Missouri in 1985, rising to full professor in 1992. He moved to the University of Minnesota in 1995, and was chair of the university's American Studies Program from 1996 to 2000.
In 2000, he received an appointment as a professor of history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Roediger has also served as the director for the Center on Democracy in a Multiracial Society at UIUC.
Roediger is a member of the board of directors of the Charles H Kerr Company Publishers, a position he has held since 1992.
Roediger's research interests primarily concern race and class in the United States, although he has also written on radicalism in American history and politics.
Roediger's book The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class has had a significant impact on the study of race in the U.S. In the work, Roediger argued that many different peoples now considered "white" in the United States were not initially perceived as such. Irish Americans, for example, were not considered "white" until the idea of white shifted to an identity that contrasted themselves with black slaves. Roediger claims that the social construction of the concept of a white race in the United States was a conscious effort to mentally distance slave owners from slaves. By the 18th century, he says, "white" had become well-established as a racial term.
In 1989, Roediger and historian Philip Foner co-authored Our Own Time: A History of American Labor and the Working Day, a book that provides a highly detailed account of the movement to shorten the working day in the United States. The work broke new ground by combining labor history with a study of culture and the nature of work. The book also extended the history of the eight hour day movement to colonial times. The authors argued that debate over the length of the work-day or work-week has been the central issue of the American labor movement during periods of high growth.
Roediger is currently researching the interrelation between labor management and the formation of racial identities in the U.S.
In 1992, Roediger was given the Merle Curti Award for his book, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class. The prize is given to the best book in social history by the Organization of American Historians.
In 1999, Roediger won the Carlton C. Qualey Memorial Award for his article "Inbetween Peoples," which was co-authored with James Barrett. The award is given by the Immigration and Ethnic History Society for the best article in the Journal of American Ethnic History.