Current Research Projects

Last Best Chance: Diaspora, Diplomacy, and the New Deal's Fight Against Fascism at the 1939 New York World's Fair

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Last Best Chance tells the story of how the 1939 New York World’s Fair drew everyday Americans into the New Deal’s fight against fascism, laying the foundations for the ideological standoff and popular mobilization that exploded into World War Two. 

100% American: The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Creation of a National Consciousness

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100% American tells the story of how the New Deal's most popular agency turned to the American wilderness to stimulate economic recovery, promote environmental conservation, and nurture sociocultural homogenization on the eve of war.

"Good Neighbors? Cultural Diplomacy & Interwar Latin America, 1936–41."

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This project considers the role and reach of American cultural diplomacy across the South American continent in the years immediately preceding the outbreak of World War II. While most studies related to the diplomatic efforts of interwar powers maintain focus on the Northern Hemisphere, this study will deal specifically with the relationship between the United States and the people of Latin America. Significantly, while Washington certainly made use of more traditional diplomatic channels through the organization of state visits, annulment of the Platt Amendment, and removal of troops from Nicaragua and Haiti, the U.S. State Department relied most heavily on various forms of cultural diplomacy to advance its message of cooperative peace and mutually assured hemispheric security. Such an approach rendered South America the principle battlefield of a transatlantic propaganda war which eventually came to conscript the creative talents of people such as Walt Disney, Carmen Miranda, and Harold Graham.

"A New Deal for the American Immigrant: The Works Progress Administration's Rehabilitation of Angel and Ellis Islands, 1934–42." 

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This article considers the New Deal’s interaction with two of the United States’ most significant maritime ports of entry. Conservative estimates figure that no less than eight million immigrants passed through Ellis Island in New York City and Angel Island in San Francisco between 1900-1933. Albeit to varying degrees, both would go on to be afforded considerable nationwide attention throughout the interwar years and received valuable federal funding from agencies such as the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and Public Works Administration (PWA). In comparing the treatment of these seaports, this project will investigate their individual and combined role in the New Deal’s efforts to reinforce, or even forge, a sense of transcultural national identity in the years preceding the Second World War. Using these two sites as case studies, it will offer a unique contribution to a slowly expanding body of scholarship concerned with the culturally-oriented reclamation of public and historic space across the New Deal United States and advance our understanding of the ways in which these once-functional ports maintained relevance as monumental sites of inclusivity.