Recently Completed Dissertations

David Getman

"States of Legitimacy: The British Left, Iraqi Nationalism, and the 'Spirit of Internationalism,' 1914-1932"

Advisor: Martin Wiener

This dissertation is a transnational history of twentieth-century anti-colonial nationalism.  It focuses specifically on the connections between the dissenting British left and Iraqi nationalists during the First World War and its aftermath.  Based on extensive archival research in English and Arabic of official and unofficial sources in London and Syria, I show how British and Iraqi anti-colonial activists simultaneously sought to democratize British imperial policy-making in the metropole and periphery of the Empire.   From its early hours, Liberal and Labour leaders opposed to the First World War campaigned tirelessly for an internationalist settlement without annexations as the only guarantee of lasting peace for the postwar world.  Colonial ‘national awakenings’ in Egypt, India, and Iraq, they argued, both decried the legitimacy of British ‘imperial democracy’ and heralded a new era of international democracy deserving British support.  Iraq was, for them, a test case for a nobler approach to maintaining international security through nurturing, rather than subjugating, national sovereignty.  The British government’s unwillingness to relinquish Iraq after the war was taken as evidence of its unfitness to govern free peoples either at home or abroad.  Through my research, I am able to show how the so-called ‘extreme nationalist’ editors of Iraq’s daily press followed the development of these arguments globally and adapted them in their attempt to reorient the development of their state around Iraqi national interests.  Playing upon the sensitivity of British administrators to domestic and international public opinion, Iraqi nationalists were able to keep the development of their political institutions on a far more democratic course than either the British or Arab elite desired.  Thus I show how British and Iraqi figures created a network of dissent that sought to undermine the foundations of British imperial rule in Iraq and realize the idea of national sovereignty as the capstone of international law, to the detriment of imperial legitimacy globally.  This study, I believe, demonstrates how transnational approaches can provide us with a richer understanding of the role of popular nationalism in the birth of the international world in the early twentieth century.

Andrew McNeill Canady

 

"Southern Liberalism and Its Limits: Religion, Race, and Appalachian Reform in the Life of Willis Duke Weatherford, 1875–1970"

Advisor: John B. Boles

My dissertation is a contextual biography of a white southern liberal.  W. D. Weatherford lived from 1875 to 1970 and played a key role in many of the significant social and political issues of the day, namely race relations, education, religion, and Appalachian reform.  He was a pioneer in interracial work in the U. S. South who became involved in 1908 and stayed active in the field through the 1960s.  Weatherford also was one of the central figures in the YMCA from 1900 to 1945, a time when this institution wielded strong influence on communities and college campuses in this region and across the country.  In the last twenty-five years of his life he primarily addressed Appalachian poverty and this region’s religious life.

In the field of southern religious history my study complements other scholarship that contends that a social gospel tradition did not exist in the South.  This religious movement appeared in the northern United States in the late nineteenth century, providing a theological critique of social structures in light of new conditions brought on by the urban-industrial revolution.  Recently, scholars have questioned to what extent this phenomenon penetrated the South.  I argue that Weatherford’s activities, while representing a form of socially engaged Christianity, were not a manifestation of that particular movement.  For the greater part of his life he never challenged Jim Crow segregation, the structure underlying racism in the United States, nor did he seriously question the capitalist economy that contributed to the poverty of African Americans and those of Appalachia.  In general, he steered clear of politics, concentrating his efforts on the power of education to change the perceptions of people and bring gradual improvement in society.

Weatherford’s limitations were also shared with most other white southern progressives of his era, making an analysis of his life an excellent way of illuminating the limits of southern liberalism in general.  In particular, I argue Weatherford’s southern background, the financial constraints he faced as director of several institutions, the climate of white supremacy in the South, and his religious focus limited how far he pushed for social justice.

Joseph Abel

Advisor: John B. Boles

"Sunbelt Civil Rights: Race, Labor, and Politics in the Aircraft Manufacturing Industry of Texas, 1940-1980"

This dissertation critically engages the growing literature on the “long” civil rights movement and the African American struggle for equal employment.  Focusing on the Fort Worth plants of General Dynamics and its local competitors, this study argues that the federal government’s commitment to fair employment can best be understood by examining its attempts to oversee the racial practices of southern defense contractors prior to passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.  From World War II onward, the aircraft factories of north Texas became testing grounds for federal civil rights reform as a variety of non-statutory executive agencies attempted to root out employment discrimination.  However, although they raised awareness about the problem, these early efforts yielded few results.  Because the agencies involved refused to utilize their punitive authority or counter the industry’s unstable demand for labor through rational economic planning, workplace inequality continued to be the norm.  Ultimately, federal policymakers’ reluctance to reform the underlying structural causes of employment discrimination among southern defense contractors set a precedent that has continued to hinder African American economic advancement.

This dissertation also reevaluates assumptions regarding southern unions and the response of white workers to the civil rights movement.  Just as the economic relationship between the federal government and defense contractors gave rise to early mandates on fair employment, the unstable demand for labor and adversarial management style of the Fort Worth aircraft manufacturers nurtured a form of unionism unique within the South for its moderate treatment of African Americans.  Long before most labor organizations in the region resigned themselves to similar philosophies, the local aircraft workers’ unions adopted a pragmatic approach toward racial questions based largely on their need to counter managerial abuses and provide job security.  Whatever their personal prejudices may have been, local white labor leaders nevertheless protected the economic rights of African Americans through forceful shopfloor representation and the negotiation of racially inclusive contracts.  By demanding a workplace in which management’s actions were constrained by a set of fairly negotiated contractual rules, Fort Worth’s aircraft unions struck an important if unintended blow against the arbitrariness of employment discrimination.