MO3351 Doing and Practicing Transnational and Global History

Wimmer and Schiller’s article offers very comprehensive information on approaching migrants historically. Indeed, migration can be seen as a disruptive force to the common assumption of the “isomorphisms between citizenry, sovereign, solidary group and nation”, not least when the migrants’ assimilation into their adopted nation and political allegiance might be in question. This crucially points to the insufficiency of taking political boundaries for granted as units of historical analysis, as the border are in many ways porous — in the case of migrants, it is penetrated by the migrants continued financial, familial and political attachment to the motherland. This is also reflected in my current research on the transnational dynamics underlying the Troubles where Irish communities overseas (Irish-American Catholics especially) remained very much concerned with sectarianism and violence in their distant homelands, and played crucial roles as both the influenced and influencers over the course of the conflict. Place of births or citizenships (could be summed up as political geography) were therefore far from absolute determinant factors of spheres or extent of influence and interaction which were swayed by a vast array of other matters ranging from ancestry and religion, to ideology and wealth. The research by van de Laar on port cities acts as an excellent empirical study that illustrates the merits of this standpoint. By placing Liverpool, Bremen, Rotterdam and Marseilles alongside each other, the essay exemplifies the notion of translocality — these port cities probably had more connection, or were more comparable with port cities elsewhere than inland cities in their immediacy. Importantly, port cities act as windows on a wider world, with the waterfront areas being zones of contact. 

I find van de Vaar’s writing on the waterfront highly intriguing, as it introduces a spatial nuance which distinguishes between areas of port cities where particular transnational connections are felt to varying extents. Waterfronts in particular were perceived as more of a frontier than border, being an area of intense economic exchange as well as place of departure/arrival for migrants. At times it even acquired the reputation of being promiscuous enclaves, as “pools of corruption, with poverty, crime and alcoholism”. To me this makes for a rife field to combine transnational history and spatial history. Namely, would these specific contact zones “feel different” as one sees of steps into them — would there be certain visual marker, regulations or norms, or even other unique senses (noise of port labour, smell of the ocean/certain cargos, etc.) that mark out the waterfront to their contemporaries. Being from Shanghai, a city known for western concessions and territoriality in the modern era, I had particular echoes with such particularity of waterfront areas. Even until this day, whenever I wander onto the Bund (the heart of foreign concessions sitting right by River Huangpu), the sound of the cargo ships’ horns, the distinctively western style of buildings and the noise from sky bar parties on top of them (hosting primarily foreign customers) constantly remind me that this has once been, an arguably still is a contact zone where the east meets the west. Indeed for many Shanghainese, the Bund remains a place apart for both its familiarity and alienness to them — being only less than 10 kilometres from my home near Xujiahui, part of me somehow feels closer to Covent Garden than Xujiahui.  One can extend this spatial scope, in fact, onto the broader study of migration, especially their physical presence in their destination. Would flags, attires, appearance or even accents mark their communities out as particular in the eyes of both locals and themselves? And how would this impact on their assimilation to their adopted societies and their sense of connection/separation from their distant homes? With transnational histories being particularly fond of playing the game scales, it would be potentially fruitful to combine the vast scope of detecting transnational ties with a microscopic perspective on how such dynamics were manifested on the ground through spatial media. 

The displacement of the White Russians following the Russian Civil War produced one of the largest and earliest politically defined refugee diasporas of the interwar period. This exodus provides a vantage point on the legal status and political identity of post-1920 migratory groups, and since statelessness exists as a condition between jurisdictions, rather than belonging to any single one, a transnational analysis is not merely useful but methodologically necessary. This project will examine how White Russian émigrés navigated and influenced the emerging interwar practices, both international and local, that were used to govern and deal with so-called ‘stateless’ people through a comparison of the contrasting governance environment of Paris and Shanghai.

For this project, ‘White Russians’ refers to subjects of the former Russian Empire who, during and immediately after the Civil War, were a part of the White movement or were civilians who fled due to anti-communist political beliefs. ‘Statelessness’ refers to a person who lacks any form of recognised nationality and is thus incapable of being issued or possessing a legally accepted national passport. ‘Shaping governance’ will be interpreted to mean measurable two-way interactions between these stateless persons and their residential authorities or institutions, primarily through traceable means, such as petitions, mutual-aid infrastructures, and policing/surveillance.

My working hypothesis is that statelessness, rather than simply being a condition imposed from above, functioned as a driver of institution-building from below: White Russian communities constructed work, welfare, and documentation, while their host authorities responded through a formalisation of categories and controls relating to the recognition of nationhood. The League of Nations’ Nansen passport provides the transnational entry point, as an internationally derived mechanism explicitly designed to be used across jurisdictions, it allows us to ask how a single supranational instrument was locally adapted and contested across greatly different sites.

To keep the project manageable, I will focus on 1920s-30s White Russian communities in Paris, a relatively consolidated national administrative setting, and Shanghai, a multi-jurisdictional imperial treaty-port. This project will aim to discover whether similar mechanisms of community authority and documentary governance emerged under structurally dissimilar conditions, and what those similarities or divergences reveal about how statelessness as a transnational legal category was negotiated on the ground.

The project draws on three bodies of sources. First, international and humanitarian records on refugee categorization and mobility (including debates and practices surrounding documentation). Second, émigré-produced sources such as newspapers, organisational bulletins, and memoirs, to reconstruct how émigrés presented their own status, legitimacy, and collective purpose. Third, host-state and municipal materials, such as legal and policing/surveillance records, to gauge tensions between refugee self-organization and external governance. Hoover’s Russia Abroad Digital Collection, an open-access archive that has digitised more than one million pages from nearly six hundred Russian émigré newspapers, provides an in-depth comparison of discourse across sites and years. The supranational perspective will be granted through the use of Claudena Skran’s work Refugees in Inter-War Europe. Municipal sources will rely on archival resources for the cities of Paris and Shanghai themselves, such as the Archives du ministère des Affaires étrangères for Paris, and the Shanghai Municipal Police (SMP) files dedicated to the status of White Russians in Shanghai from 1920-44.

This project contributes to the historiography of transnational history by connecting diaspora social life and political organisation to the development of refugee governance, rather than treating ‘refugees’ as passive objects of policy. It also challenges blanket narratives of ‘the White Russian diaspora’ by asking whether similar mechanisms of community authority and governance emerged in a European capital and an East Asian treaty-port. Likely counterarguments are that émigré influence on governance is overstated and that émigré sources exaggerate their own political unity. I will address these by comparing personal émigré narratives against administrative records, and by foregrounding the internal fragmentation along class, regional, and political lines that existed within the White Russian diaspora.

The main challenges to this project are the linguistic diversity of the sources, uneven or incomplete archives, and the potential for the geographic scope of the covered communities to expand. The project must therefore keep a tight focus to Paris/Shanghai and use term-consistency checked machine translation to allow for close reading of original-language passages rather than relying on secondary sources.

This project will explore the relationship between race and golf from a transnational perspective, focusing on both change and the persistence of exclusion within the sport. It asks how far the racial dynamics of golf have changed from the twentieth century to the present, and whether that change has extended beyond image, to the deeper structures of racial and class inequality that have shaped access to the game. Furthermore, the case study of Tiger Woods as a breakthrough Black golfer will help evaluate whether golf has escaped its exclusionary past.

Golf has historically been associated with whiteness, elite privilege, and exclusion. Spreading from Scotland through imperial links and upper-class networks, the sport developed within private clubs that often restricted access based on race and class. This tradition extended to the professional ranks, where the Professional Golfers Association (PGA) limited members to golfers of the Caucasian race until 1961.[1] This history makes golf a revealing case to examine how racial barriers within the sport have been questioned, challenged and sustained.

Thus, the rise of Tiger Woods in this environment provides a valuable case study. His record-breaking 1997 Masters victory challenged the long-standing notion of golf as a white sport, creating visibility of a non-white golfer dominating a historically exclusive game. However, this project will not simply follow Woods’ achievements but instead use his career to investigate how race in golf was reimagined across different national and cultural contexts. Lane Demas stresses the importance of his breakthrough as a Black athlete in a sport historically linked with colonialism, wealth and whiteness.[2]  Andrew Billings extends this debate further, highlighting the importance of Woods’ self-identification as ‘Cablinasian,’ due to his mixed heritage.[3] His mother’s Thai background saw him celebrated as partly Asian, and thus Woods didn’t represent a single racial narrative, but became a transnational figure through which race in golf was renegotiated.

Junior golf is important to this project, as it shows whether racial change in golf moved beyond image, to a structural level. Matthew Hawzen et al.’s[4] analysis highlights that junior golf continues to reproduce social inequality within golf, which helps explore the limitations of recent racial changes and Woods’ impact. Moreover, while focused on golf, this project will also situate the sport within the wider context of race and sport.

To avoid this project simply becoming a biography of Woods and his achievements, Jill Lepore’s ‘Historians Who Love Too Much’ provides a framework for preventing the project from becoming biographical. She warns against coming too close to a subject, which is an issue I could face as a golfer. Thus, rather than treating Woods in isolation, the project will use his career to uncover broader issues of race, class and exclusion within golf.[5]

The project will draw on a range of primary sources, including PGA records such as the ‘Caucasian clause,’ and newspaper articles from the 1990s and 2000s showing how Woods’ success was framed in different national contexts. Statistics will also play a key role in determining how diversity in golf has changed in recent decades, particularly in key areas of investigation like junior golf.

Together, these primary sources and the secondary literature on race and sport will help investigate how golf has moved away from its exclusionary past and where its deeper structural inequalities remain intact. Because golf continues to struggle with questions of race and class, this project holds value beyond its immediate case study, offering clear scope for further research into the persistence of inequality within the sport.

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Maritime environments are particularly suited to transnational history because oceans resist political boundaries. Alaska’s fisheries, situated at the crest of the North Pacific, have long existed within international economic, ecological, and political systems. Within this maritime context, Alaskan salmon fisheries involve communities with subsistence traditions, state and federal regulators, commercial interests, and international governing bodies. Land and resource rights are a crucial aspect of Native sovereignty, but commercial salmon management areas, as defined by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADFG), differ from the Native Alaskan regions defined by the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA). How, then, are subsistence, sport, and commercial fishing rights defined between rural communities, ANCSA regions, and salmon management areas, and who decides? In essence, this project asks, who has the right to manage salmon as a natural resource in Alaska?  

Methodologically, this project will adopt a transnational approach. Rather than treating Alaska as a contained space, this approach will examine how salmon operates across borders: salmon migration routes connect Canada through Alaska into the wider North Pacific, commercial fishing fleets and processors have historically employed foreign workers, and resource governance involves multiple states, countries, and communities. Transnational history also emphasizes the movement of ideas and institutions. In this regard, fisheries governance in Alaska is shaped by international agreements, shared ecological management strategies, and global debates about Indigenous rights.   

This project will draw on sources that highlight this overlapping and integrated network of resource governance. First, legislative documents like the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA), 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA), and Limited Entry System (established 1973) bear relevance as both reshaped Indigenous land claims and subsistence rights in Alaska. Next, this project requires listening to and reading firsthand accounts of Native Alaskan experiences in the shifting landscape of fishing in their communities. Furthermore, records of fisheries management organizations such as the Pacific Salmon Commission and North Pacific Anadromous Fish Commission illustrate how salmon migration requires international coordination across the North Pacific. Finally, the project will incorporate comparative scholarship on Indigenous resource rights in other regions like Canada and Finland. These broader analyses of Arctic policy and Indigenous sovereignty allow for a comparison of how communities negotiated access to natural resources in the 20^th century. Together, these sources allow the project to integrate environmental, legal, and social histories of fisheries.   

This project contributes to transnational history by highlighting both indigenous agency and the influence of natural resources in multiple spatial contexts. Indigenous actors are central participants in transnational systems. Native Alaskan communities interact far beyond their local communities with U.S. state institutions and, further, with international regulatory frameworks and global environmental movements. Equally important, by examining salmon as both ecological actors and economic commodities, the project demonstrates how environmental processes shape political and economic systems across borders. Lastly, contemporary debates – such as the controversy surrounding the Pebble Mine in Bristol Bay and its environmental, political, and commercial implications– show how resource governance in Alaska continues to involve overlapping interests.   

By asking who has the authority to manage salmon as a natural resource in Alaska, this project leads to further questions. These questions concern the definitions of Native Alaskan sovereignty and resource rights, the dynamics between Alaskan institutions and other actors in the North Pacific ecosystem, shifts in these dynamics in response to environmental and economic pressures, and comparisons between Alaskan salmon management and Indigenous resource right debates elsewhere in the world. By implicating regional Native Corporations, tribal- and community-level Native Associations, federal and state entities, environmental organizations, commercial fishermen, and other nations, fisheries management is more than a domestic issue. International ecological systems, treaties, and comparative Indigenous politics make a purely national analysis insufficient; thus, examining Alaska’s salmon fisheries through a transnational lens offers a powerful way to rethink sovereignty, environmental governance, and Indigenous political agency in the 20^th century.   

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, historians have debated the causes of the collapse of Communist regimes across Eastern Europe. Early interpretations largely framed this moment as the triumph of Western capitalism over socialism. More recent scholarship, however, has shifted focus toward internal weaknesses within the Eastern bloc, often through a transnational lens that emphasizes the impact of cross-border cultural exchange. Scholars such as Jolanta Pekacz, Timothy Ryback, Peter Wicke, and Tony Mitchell have highlighted the influence of Western culture, particularly rock music, in shaping Eastern European societies. As Pekacz notes, by the 1970s many socialist states had surpassed rigid Stalinist control, thus allowing some room for political and cultural expression. Within this context, rock music has been increasingly recognized by historians such as Wicke and Ryback as a platform through which oppositional ideas circulated and grew. While not identified as a primary cause of the collapse of Communism, recent historiography by historians including Pekacz and Mitchell have foregrounded rock music as a contributor to the cultural conditions that enabled this political transformation.

Building on this scholarship, this project argues that rock music played an important role in fostering a transnational youth culture that contributed to the fall of Communism in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), Poland, and Czechoslovakia in the 1980s. Studies by Grzegorz Piotrowski, Jeff Hayton, and Martin Husak emphasize the importance of local rock scenes in providing a platform for dissent and shaping alternative identities within this context. Wicke, for instance, notes how rock musicians bypassed state intervention by circulating coded oppositional messages (1993). This project will employ a thematic structure, examining rock as a transnational language that undermined the Iron Curtain, its role in shaping dissent, state regulation, and rock music’s presence during the 1989 revolution. Drawing on both cross-border and domestic cultural exchanges, this project will employ a transnational cultural approach, with a geographic comparative focus where relevant, to demonstrate how cultural practices contributed to the destabilization of Communist legitimacy in Eastern Europe. 

As well as the authors mentioned, whose works analyze the impact of cultural practice at the end of the Cold War, additional studies will provide further context. This includes G. Musgrave and D. Athanassiou’s work on Polish cultural entrepreneurship and Sabrina P. Ramet and Vladimir Dordevic’s research on Czechoslovak rock. The project will also engage with broader historiography on youth culture and political dissent in late socialist countries, using works by Gabriel Bar-Haím, Robert Sharlet, and Timothy S. Brown. Primary sources will include recordings of performances, song lyrics, and state documents relating to cultural regulation and censorship. Together, these sources will enable a nuanced analysis of how rock music operated within and against state structures in Eastern Europe. 

A key counterargument concerns the extent to which cultural movements, particularly youth culture, can meaningfully influence political change. While some historians downplay this role, this project aligns with more recent scholarship that highlights the political significance of cultural practices. Another challenge is the argument that state control over the music industry limited the ability of artists to express dissent. This project will consider this while also focusing on research demonstrating that musicians employed coded language and informal networks to evade censorship. A further potential issue is the broader question of causation and to what extent rock music contributed to the fall of Communism in 1989. While this project will explore this, it ultimately does not seek to identify the extent of this contribution, but rather to identify the ways in which rock music shaped the cultural conditions that enabled political transformation. 

This project will contribute to the growing historiography that challenges the perceived rigidity of the Iron Curtain by highlighting the importance of transnational cultural exchange. By focusing on rock music and youth culture, it will foreground often-overlooked social and cultural dimensions of political change in late socialist Eastern Europe. In doing so, it hopes to offer a more nuanced understanding of the collapse of Communism, demonstrating that the persistence of rock as a cultural movement played a meaningful role in undermining state authority and shaping broader geopolitical transformations.

Exploring the second wave of feminism in transnational and intersectional perspective

Literature review on the subject

Historiography on the subject of the second wave of feminism has evolved throughout the years. Indeed, the historians first explored those movements within the boundaries of  nation-states, focusing mostly on western countries including two important figures : the United-States and France. Although some transatlantic connections were already highlighted in those studies, the main focus was on national contexts. 

Studies of the second wave of feminism, specifically because of this idea of having different waves in which women were fighting for different rights, were also built in comparison to feminist movements of the first wave (mid 19th century-early 20th century). Indeed, the second wave is assimilated to a shift in demands in terms of rights. The main idea was that the private was political, gender violence which women faced in private were the result of systemic violence and discrimination and should also represent a concern for the state. Demands were much larger than during the first wave, which focused on legal rights and mostly the right to vote, and included issues of workplace equality, male violence, reproductive rights, and sexual liberation. Thus, historiography on the second wave of feminism initially focused on the demands of feminists in comparison to previous periods, the mode of actions and the evolution of the movement within national context. 

A shift then occurred with the emergence of “Third world feminism” which led scholars to de-center the study of the second feminist wave from the US and European perspectives and also aimed at highlighting how issues of imperialism and other forms of discrimination could relate to the movement. Still, such studies focused also mainly on national and local contexts. Then, the emergence of transnational history allowed for a reconsideration of the subject in transnational perspective, with some authors such as Molony and Nelson trying to rethink the spatialization and temporalization of the movement but also focusing more on highlighting transnational connections and circulations. 

Final project 

I wish to further explore the subject of the second wave of feminism  in a transnational perspective for my final project. My main goal is to explore how ideas circulated and how such circulation or most importantly the absence of circulation were shaped by national and local contexts. In this final project I will explore the second wave of feminism in a long perspective and will try to expand its geographical boundaries by de-centering my study from the western countries, not only by studying interactions between western countries and non-western countries but also studying interactions between non-western countries. I also wish to explore feminist mobilisations during the second wave through its interactions with other movements and how some struggles converged or not. Some feminist movements of the period, though struggling for the rights of women, also constructed themselves through the exclusion of other women or at least their erasure, and participated in the reproduction of other forms of oppression. 

In their book, Molony and Nelson mention the important connection between transnational perspectives on the second wave and intersectional analysis which I wish to mobilize too. My final goal in this project is to highlight the diversity of experiences of women of the movement, show perhaps that there were differents movements rather than a singular, how those movements were shaped by national or international contexts as well as transnational connections, but also highlight connections with other struggles whether those took the form of solidarity between different movements or rather the reproduction of other forms of discrimination through feminist fights of the period. 

I will be looking at primary sources such as feminist journals, papers of international conferences and exchanges between feminist actors, in order to analyze how feminist actors circulated and how some ideas were represented and received. 

Finally, because this topic is so vast, my project will most likely take the form of a project proposal rather than an essay, highlighting ideas to look further into.

Current scholarly literature on indigeneity is largely preoccupied with two primary themes: a spiritual connection to the land and the experience of colonial oppression.1 While these frameworks are vital, they often fail to account for indigenous groups that do not fit as neatly into these categories, specifically those who may be exploitative or even perpetrators of colonial violence against other indigenous groups. This project seeks to expand the definition of indigeneity by examining the Comanche Empire as a case study in global agency. As well as arguing this case, this project seeks to double as a call to action for international NGO’s and governments to implement more representative environmental and cultural policies for indigenous communities. For too long they have been seen as ‘separate’ as ‘others’ who were passive in the formation and running of our global colonial system. The Comanche Case highlights that this is a limited perspective, one that keeps indigenous groups on the fringes of global change.

Comanche history, and its modern political legacy, demonstrates how indigenous groups can exert significant agency even within a violent, imperial landscape. This research is not an attempt to demonize indigenous groups nor follow a ‘reverse racism pipeline’; rather, it highlights the complexities of communities that were active participants in the development of the modern world. The current international environmental and political climate is rife with violence, perpetuating the brutal context in which it was conceived by major state actors.

Due to this there is a sentiment that the ‘inherently peaceful’ indigenous groups do not have the experiences nor facilities to be actors in this world; for better or worse change. Although hope for a more peaceful and cohesive climate remain, this project aims to highlight that the world does not need to be ‘perfect’ in its environmentalism or international relations for indigenous groups to hold a leading place on the world stage. To achieve this, I am taking on a multidisciplinary methodology, engaging with historical literature, primary source letters, and insights from anthropologists and international policy.

Central to this is the work of historian Pekka Hämäläinen, who argues that Comanches employed aggressive power politics through a hierarchical intersocietal system, achieving agency on the same stage as the Americans and Spanish empire.2 Whilst his argument is central and important to this argument, I will engage with few criticisms concerning his term ‘reverse colonialism’ as to avoid the trend of demonizing minority groups when exploring their complex relations to violence and colonialism.

The Comanches were a nomadic tribe whose practices also moved between raiding, trading, diplomacy, and enslaving, leaving colonial rivals confused.3 This project explores this “ultimate paradox”: while the Comanches initially adjusted their traditions to accommodate Europeans, they eventually forced colonists to adjust to a world that was foreign, uncontrollable, and increasingly unliveable. The Comanche Empire serves as a counter-case to the narrative of the singular national success story of the United States, representing a continental transformation that enabled the rise of the U.S. with global ramifications.4

A significant portion of the analysis focuses on ‘spatiality’ and ‘placemaking’. Placemaking involves three elements: location, a setting for social relationships, and a ‘sense of place’ that gives it meaning for a group.5 In ‘contested geographies’, the Spanish sought to remake indigenous landscapes, but the Comanches simultaneously asserted their own identity within those same spaces. Physical evidence of this persists in Comanche Marker Trees, such as the Storytelling Place Marker Tree in East Dallas.6

Finally, this project links historical agency to current global ramifications, particularly in the realm of environmental politics. Modern indigenous geographers caution against environmental theories that ignore the intricate relationships indigenous peoples have with water governance and climate change.7 Indigenous knowledges were historically discarded or devalued during the establishment of nations like the USA, Canada, and Australia.8 By reconsidering who gets to decide what is ‘useful’ knowledge, this research highlights that indigenous agency remains a fundamental, if often ignored, component of global development and environmental justice.

The Transnationalism of the Nationalist New Right: The Spread to Latin America 

Background

Today, the far right has risen to prominence, shaping policies both domestically and internationally and impacting the lives of many. Although the movement’s popularity has appeared abrupt, the wave of extremist political conservatism the world has witnessed is a product of a long history of intellectual and philosophical conversations across borders in Europe and the United States. The new right movement dates back to the 1960s in France, when militant figures such as Alain de Benoist responded to cultural shifts and economic crises arising from industrialization and globalization. 

Despite the movement in France officially cementing and reinvigorating the right into something more formal, these conversations and intellectual development had been happening throughout Europe. Common strands in the new right’s ideology included European nihilism, populism, anti-elite sentiments, distaste for the managerial state, nationalism, and the privileging of what they termed “organic” cultural groups. Despite disliking the way globalization changed society, the movement still favored modernization. They just wanted the changes it brought to align with an essentialized conception of the interests, values, and morals of their local cultures.

Latin America had a vastly different experience with conservative movements and parties. The far-right parties prominent in the political sphere during the 1980s and 1990s were a result of the United States’ soft power in the region. The parties largely subscribed to the “Washington Consensus,” a set of policies that supported the free market and the privatization of previously communal resources. The right-wing regimes in Latin America were at odds with the ideology of the new right. The European New Right was a reaction to modernization, economic tribulations, and globalization, while the right in Latin America caused the problems (mainly economic) that the New Right mobilized against.

The global New Right movement changed drastically in the 2010s, as it merged with the radical right, the extreme right, and mainstream conservatives under the banner of populist nationalism. Thus, the alt-right was born. Through the internet, online actors began building platforms, communicating with similarly minded people regardless of borders, and making their ideas easily accessible. The alt-right made its way to Latin America as politicians and public figures interacted with and participated in conferences such as the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Despite the ideology seeming incongruent with the region’s history, as right-wing parties in Latin America have historically stood opposed to the European New Right philosophies—especially in their anti-elite culture —the transnational networks have allowed the movement to nestle itself in a completely different context. The alt-right in Latin America is a fledgling movement; however, its growing prominence in political circles is increasingly notable. How did this happen? How does the movement look in this region? How do these transnational communities function? How does this global communication of the alt-Right build upon or contradict the intellectual history of the older new right? But most importantly, what does the prominence of global conservative movements in two different periods tell us about the development and spread of political movements? 

My working hypothesis is that a period of increased mobility, spurred by globalization, the advancement of communication technologies, and the adoption of new strategies for political mobilization by specific actors, allowed the far right to spread beyond the place of the movements’ original conception. I argue that by understanding the transnational dimension of the earlier New Right movement in the twentieth century, we can understand the expansive nature of the alt-right in the twenty-first century. 

Significance 

Scholarship on the far right has steadily increased as the movement continues to unsettle global politics. Recent works, primarily in sociology, history, and political science, have expanded on the beliefs, interests, and prominence of these parties. However, most of the work is limited to specific nation-states, which is indeed useful when considering the internal diversity of the movement’s ideology. Transnational perspectives are rarer. Works with a transnational perspective have centered on Europe and the United States. I have yet to find research on how the alt-right (specifically) has manifested in Latin America. The existing research is limited to right-wing regimes in the 1980s and 90s.

Methodology and Approach 

For this project, I will compare two time frames: the 1960s-70s and the 2010s-2020s to study the movement’s development and the mechanisms it employs to spread globally. For its transnational approach, I must balance the significance of the nation-state for the movement (as the actors themselves heavily engage with ideas around it), while also emphasizing that we can not just focus on the local and national histories and cultural contexts to understand the new right because of the significant role that transborder interactions had in shaping the ideologies of the far-right. For primary sources, I am considering studying interactions/communications, pamphlets, discussions, and older scholarship to research the New Right. While focusing on online forums, think tank articles, opinion pieces, speeches, and conference information for the alt-right. 

Roadmap 

The current project would be divided into three parts. The beginning of the history of the new right. A section on the historical context of the right in Latin America, and lastly, a portion on the alt-right in the twenty-first century, where I focus on the current state of the movement and its development in Latin America.

For my research project, I am looking at the transnational networks that created and maintained the New Right movement and (in modernity) the Alt-right movement. I read Wimmer and Schiller’s work on Methodological Nationalism, The Social Sciences, and The Study of Migration, to consider different approaches to the methodology in my own work. This piece highlighted various ideas I noted in my pre-liminary research. Most significantly, I believe that the New Right movement showcases how individuals internalize academia’s understanding of the nation-state and nationalism and apply it to their political mobilization.
Schiller and Wimmer discuss how nationalism, the formation of the nation-state, and migration were understood and shaped mutually through global trends occurring from around the 1870s to the First World War. The creation of a global market, a renewed rush for colonization, and an increase in industrialization and modernization led to the more concrete formation of the nation-state. As such, the nation-state became the assumed and natural container of organization, creating an identity shaped by an understanding of “the people” who held rights, responsibilities of mutual aid, and shared a cultural identity. This era gave rise to academia’s understanding ( and the overall organization of knowledge and fields) of the nation and the people who belonged within it. Therefore, the social sciences have hardly questioned the methodological nationalism in their works. The social sciences would either ignore, take for granted, or remain constrained to a specific territorial boundary when touching upon the nation-state and nationalism. In the end, these categories of study were created and formalized because they helped concretize modern ideas of the nation-state.
When conducting my preliminary research, multiple articles and journals expressed shock at the bouts of violent nationalism expressed by the new right. I found this sentiment interesting, as based on my previous knowledge and historical pieces on the evolution of the right, conservatism, and its emphasis on natural and “organic” ethnic groups had been a continuity since the very creation of the nation-state as an identity. Schiller and Wimmer discuss how the social sciences have had amnesia over the role of nationalism (even in its violent expressions) in creating boundaries and national identities. Nationalism was assumed to be foreign to Western states, which were built upon democracy and liberal ideology.
What I found the most interesting was that the individuals who developed the foundational ideology for the new right were rooted in the ideologies that led to the formation of the nation-state. Similarly, how the nation-state was constructed through cross-border interactions, the nationalistic and insular far-right movement was created by transnational networks. The right’s conversations on belonging, modernization, and immigration, and “organic” ethnic groups were the same ideas that built the nation-state.
When working on this project, I must keep this in mind, because if I ignore methodological nationalism in my own work (and in my understandings of others’ research), I run the risk of portraying this movement as inherently shocking and paradoxical instead of portraying it as a natural progression of conversations on belonging and exclusion originating from the formation of nation-states.

With the project presentation coming up, I used most of my time to look into more secondary sources on the subject of the second wave of feminism from a transnational perspective and think of where I wanted to go with my final project. In my last blog, I mentioned my desire to go further than a western centered analysis of the subject and try to highlight not only the exchanges but also the absence of circulation in some cases and the barriers to the circulation of feminist ideas. My main aim is to explore how a transnational approach can help rethink and offer new perspectives on the subject of the second wave of feminism. 

In that sense Molony and Nelson’s book Women’s Activism and « Second Wave » Feminism: Transnational Histories is particularly interesting in how it highlights the role of transnational perspectives in reshaping the spatialization as well as the temporality of the second wave of feminism. Indeed, they argue that the idea that the second wave of feminism started in the early 1960s and continued throughout the 1970s is due to historiography having mostly focused on anglo-saxon and french movements. 

However, by using a transnational approach and trying to expand and de-westernize the study of feminist movements of the period, the second wave of feminism appears as a larger and longer process which, the authors argue, could be defined as starting directly following the beginning of the cold war and ending in the early twentieth century.

Molony and Nelson also question the relevance of the image of the wave in scholarly work on feminist movements of the period as it conceals the continuity and gives the appearance that there were no feminists mobilizations in between waves. They mobilize Molyneaux’s work on feminism and women’s activism and highlights the continuity between both as although women’s activism is not inherently feminist it can serve as a catalyst for feminist demands thus again putting into question the relevance of the wave image. I found this particularly interesting and I wish to keep in mind some of those concepts and points of critique that both authors made while working on my final project.

For my research project I will be exploring Jewish resilience in London during the Blitzkrieg. Specifically, I will be focusing on the targeted destruction of Jewish communities during the bombings and the persistence of antisemitism in London. While the Blitz is oftentimes remembered as a moment of British unity and patriotism, this narrative oftentimes complicates experiences of minority communities during this time, particularly London’s Jewish population.

Jewish communities were heavily concentrated in East London, including areas such as Stepney and Whitechapel, which were some of the most heavily bombed and targeted areas of London. These neighborhoods had been long standing centers for Jewish community and culture which was shaped by earlier migrations from Eastern Europe in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. I will also be briefly discussing the broader history of this migration and urban settlement in British in my project.

When thinking about the readings for this week, the arguments made by both Wimmer and Schiller suggests that national histories, such as British unity during the Blitz, can obscure the experiences of minority communities in those said nations. Furthermore, when looking at Jewish domestic suffering in London, this ‘national unified experience’ blurs. Wartime suffering directly intersects with histories of immigration and minority identities that are so oftentimes overlooked or disqualified.

Reinecke’s work on immigration policies also intersects with my project. Reinecke’s work highlights how states were increasingly intent on monitoring the movement of foreign populations in the early twentieth century. Despite Jewish communities in London having citizenship status or long standing roots in Britain, they were still targeted by restrictive immigration policies like the Aliens Act of 1905. Consequently, due to these policies and cultural attitudes, perception of Jewish migrants during the wartime bombings were under looked.

Paul van de Laar’s work on migration and urban spaces is also useful when thinking about Jewish communities located within the city. Migrants were often concentrated in specific areas that could become densely populated but also socially marginalized, and East London fits this pattern well. Migration districts like those of East London (which were heavily bombed) meant that Blitz struck communities already shaped by migration, economic precarity, and ethnic diversity.

These readings together will help frame my project in a broader context. I want to examine the Blitz more closely and how wartime experiences and memory were also shaped by migration, urban geography, and the politics of belonging. With the focus on Jewish Londoners, I hope to explore how minority groups navigated both the physical devastation of the Blitz as well as the social challenges that existed alongside it.

The distinction between “domestic” and “foreign” Poles is a pattern that I’ve found particularly relevant to my project’s exploration of indigenous communities. While we traditionally define indigeneity as an isolated community tied to land and victimised by colonialism, I want to “spin it on its head” and ask: is it really that black and white?

Conrad’s work shows that globalisation around 1900 didn’t just move people; it forced the state to redefine who belonged to the land. This reflects a core question in my research: what defines indigeneity? If a community has a transnational reach or moves out of their own free will, does that change their status as “indigenous”? For the Germans, the “foreign Pole” was a threat precisely because of this mobility, whereas the “domestic Pole” was accepted only because they were legislatively “locked” into the Prussian state.

This tension between land and identity is also evident in the “land struggle” (Bodenkampf) in Prussia’s eastern provinces. This was effectively a form of “continental imperialism,” where the state used geography, through language and schooling, as a tool for “Germanisation”. In my research, I’m looking at how war and the movement of land can be viewed as an indigenous “colonial” method. Just as the Comanche used tree marking to establish a history and legacy with their land, the Prussian state used the trope of “German work” (deutsche Arbeit) to claim a superior, “natural” right to the territory.

However, where the Comanche markers were organic, the state’s markers were bureaucratic. The introduction of the “Obligation of Domestic Legitimisation” and identity cards transformed the worker into a seasonal “vector” rather than a resident. This suggests that “culture can function like a nature,” locking groups into a specific genealogy and determining who is a “danger” to the national identity based on their origin.

Ultimately, my project will argue that understanding nations and natures requires looking at both “roots” and “routes”. The geography of belonging isn’t just about a static tie to the land; it’s about how states and communities use movement, work, and even war to define who they are in a globalising world. As I continue to hone my definition of indigeneity, Conrad’s “real” colony provides a vital framework for seeing how identity borders are drawn long before a physical border is ever crossed.

As there were no assigned readings during the spring vacation, I started looking further into my final project and had the opportunity to dive deeper into some works on the subject of the second wave of feminism of the 1970s in a transnational perspective.

For this week’s blog I thought I would explore an article that I stumbled upon almost two years ago for a gender study class and which was one of the starting points for my final project. In American lesbians are not French women: heterosexual French feminism and the Americanisation of lesbianism in the 1970s, Eloit offers an insightful study of the relations between French and American feminists and highlights how the French movement was shaped in connection with but most importantly against the American example in some cases. Indeed, she argues that the American multiculturalist society was viewed as producing separatism between communities, and American feminists and the “sex war” were used as a boogeyman by French feminists. French feminists were largely influenced by universalist ideals in which, contrary to their perception and representations of the American society, differences had to be erased in order to come together. Those different contexts were both largely influenced by national trajectories and histories. Eloit then argues that French universalism as well as the myth of a French singularity, defined by its natural harmony and coming together of men and women under the the banner of “love” which French feminists also mobilized in their discourse, was threatened by the figure of lesbian women and thus lesbian identities were erased from the french feminist movement in the name of unity under the common identity of women. She highlights how the issue of lesbianism in French feminist movements and representations of lesbian women were directly linked to representations of the American movements but also became intertwined with racial representations.

I found Eloit’s work particularly interesting as some previous readings which were assigned for this class had highlighted how transnational or global history often emphasize exchanges and the circulation of ideas rather than also focus on the limits to this circulation and how actors sometimes act against those exchanges. Eloit’s article highlights how although feminist ideas circulated during the Second wave of the 1970’s those were also sometimes stopped and limited by national or local contexts and how similar movements at first could also be built against each other. Thus, Eloit’s article shaped my desire to not only explore exchanges and circulations during the Second wave of feminism but also how and why some ideas did not circulate. In this blog I focused on French and American movements but I also aim at decentralizing this western perspective for my final project.