Staff profile

His research encompasses the business, economic, labour and technological history of the USA, pursued through closely-focused interdisciplinary case studies. His current work focuses on how American inventors, manufacturers, and consumers coped with the problems of exceptionally severe winters in the early 19th century, at a time of growing expectations of comfort and convenience in everyday life. With the opportunities presented by abundant coal deposits and improved transport systems, new technologies for heating and cooking were developed, on which 19th century-domesticity would depend. This led to the rise of a major manufacturing industry.

• American cast-iron stoves and stovemaking
• History of technology, esp. 19th-century metalworking
• Labour and business in U.S. history

• "A Stove Less Ordinary" -- history blog

Authored book

• Harris HJ (2000). Bloodless Victories: The Rise and Fall of the Open Shop in the Philadelphia Metal Trades, 1890-1940. Cambridge Cambridge University Press.
• Harris, H J (1982). The Right to Manage: Industrial Relations Policies of American Business in the 1940s. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.

Chapter in book

• Harris, H. J. (2003). Industrial paternalism and welfare capitalism: 'where's the beef?' or 'show me the money!'. In Public and Private in American History State, Family, Subjectivity in the Twentieth Century. R. Baritono, D. Frezza, A. Lorini, M. Vaudagna & E. Vezzosi Torino, Italy: Otto Editore. 459-482.
• Harris, H. J. (2002). Industrial history: the state of the art. In The State of U.S. History. Melvyn Stokes Oxford New York: Berg. 179-197.
• Harris, H. J. (2002). The spatial mobility of ordinary people: a civil-war era case. In Nation on the Move: Mobility in U.S. History. Cornelis A. van Minnen & Sylvia Hilton Amsterdam: VU University Press. 111-128.
• Harris, H.J. (1999). War in the social order: the Great War and the liberalization of American Quakerism. In Religious and Secular Reform in America: Ideas, Beliefs, and Social Change. David K. Adams & Cornelius A. van Minnen Edinburgh University Press. 179-203.
• Harris, H J (1993). Industrial democracy and liberal capitalism, ca. 1890-1920. In Industrial Democracy: The Ambiguous Promise. N.N. Lichtenstein, & H.J. Harris Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 43-66.
• Harris, H J (1991). Getting it together: the Metal Manufacturers' Association of Philadelphia, ca. 1990-1930. In Masters to Managers: Historical and Comparative Perspectives on American Employers. S.M. Jacoby New York: Columbia University Press. 111-131, 222-224.
• Harris, H J (1991). Employers' collective action in the open-shop era: the Metal Manufacturers' Association of Philadelphia, c. 1903-1933. In The Power to Manage? Employers and Industrial Relations in Comparative-Historical Perspective. S. Tolliday & J. Zeitlin London: Routledge. 117-146.
• Harris, H J (1985). The snares of liberalism? Politicians, bureaucrats, and the shaping of federal labour relations policy, ca. 1915-1947. In Shop Floor Bargaining and the state: Historical and Comparative Perspectives. S. Tolliday & J. Zeitlin Cambridge Cambridge University Press. 148-191.

Journal Article

• Harris, Howell (2012). Coping with competition: cooperation and collusion in the US stove industry, c.1870-1930. Business History Review 86(4): 657-692.
• Harris, Howell John (2009). 'The Stove Trade Needs Change Continually': Designing the First Mass-Market Consumer Durable, ca. 1810-1930. Winterthur Portfolio 43(4): 365-406.
• Harris, Howell John (2008). Conquering winter: U.S. consumers and the cast-iron stove. Building Research and Information 36(4): 337-350.
• Harris, Howell John (2008). Inventing the U.S. stove industry, c. 1815-1875: making and selling the first universal consumer durable. Business History Review 82(4): 701-733.
• Harris, Howell John (2007). Between convergence and exceptionalism: Americans and the British model of labor relations, c. 1867-1920. Labor History 48(2): 141-173.
• Harris HJ (2000). The rocky road to mass production: change and continuity in the US foundry industry, 1890-1940. Enterprise and Society 1(2): 391-437.
• Harris, Howell John (1999). Interwar American histories: left, right, and wrong. Historical Journal 42(1): 293-308.
• Harris, H J (1993). Durable goods: steelworkers in America after three decades. Labor History 34(4): 479-489.
• Harris, H J (1989). The Master Craftsman. Labor History 30(1): 93-106.