The Great Depression of the 1930s, and the US federal government’s response to it in the New Deal, marked a major turning point for the nation. The New Deal represented the country’s largest peace-time marshaling of federal and state resources to combat poverty, inequality, joblessness, and environmental degradation. But how did Americans respond to the crises of the era and to New Deal programs at the grassroots level?
This seminar will look at local and regional dimensions of the New Deal in 1930s and 1940s. Papers will examine political and cultural battles over land and debates around conservation and environmental stewardship. Participants will also analyze the ways that New Deal conflicts highlighted regional, racial, social, and religious divisions. Related questions will include: What was the relationship between large federal programs and local, grassroots activism? What lessons do we take from this transformational era into the present? How do key political, social, and cultural conflicts have their roots in the Roosevelt era?
Papers
Alison Collis Greene, Emory University, “Backwater: A Southern Community, a Cooperative Experiment, and the Problems of Race and Religion in the Post-New Deal South”
Sam Klee, University of Oslo, “Dorothy Day, the Farm Security Administration, and the Sacramental Sense of Rural America”
Jason Morgan Ward, Emory University, “A Jim Crow Ecology: Plantation Nostalgia and New Deal Backlash in the Mid-Century South”
Randall J. Stephens, University of Oslo, “The Dust Bowl and the Roosevelt Administration’s Religious Outreach Efforts”
Chair: Hilde Løvdal Stephens, University of Oslo
Registration
Interested participants should send an e-mail to Professor Randall J. Stephens (r.j.stephens@ilos.uio.no) and indicate whether they would like to participate in person or online. Professor Stephens will send a zoom invitation to online participants shortly before the event.
Sponsored by ILOS and the Fulbright Alumni Association of Norway