Will Hogue – History department PhD Candidate (Cohort 2018-2019) working with Dr. Chris Dietrich – is currently working on his dissertation, the working title of which is: “From Neo-Christendom to Neoliberalism: The Thirty Years War Over Cold War Christianity.” In this week’s From the Archives, Will shares some of his experiences while researching at the Library of Congress and the Catholic University of America Archives in Washington, DC.
What is your current research on?
My current research is on how religion shaped politics in the mid-20th century, and how religious thinkers and politicians grappled with the Cold War. In particular, my focus is on the shift from developmentalist and Center-Left Christian Democratic global politics in the ‘development decade,’ to an increasingly polarized Christian politics by the mid 1970s. Just many prominent global Christian institutions begin to reconcile with decolonization and accept, for example, the model of the Cuban Revolution, a burgeoning neoconservative religious movement resurrects hard-line anticommunism and makes strange bedfellows with neoliberals and right-wing reactionaries.
What archive(s) did you visit and can you describe the archive a little?
In a trip to Washington DC last semester, I went to the Library of Congress and to the Catholic University of America Archives. This was a great example of how different archives can be. Of course, the Library of Congress (LOC) has distinct rules and regulations governing how to maneuver the archives, and it is a massive facility (I got lost more than once). You are required to have a LOC Reader Card which will be made for you on-site. Also, be sure to book an appointment in advance – as you can imagine there is a great demand to get access to the LOC archives.
Catholic University of America, however, had their archives in a tiny room way in the back of campus. I found myself crowded around one library table with a couple other scholars and our piles of (very large!) file boxes. While LOC (and most Presidential Library) file boxes are relatively small, these were large copy paper boxes – so I had plenty of material to cover. Still, the staff was very friendly, and the USCCB papers were very helpful in shaping my research.
What was the purpose of your trip? What type of documents did you plan to look at? What makes those documents important for your research?
The purpose was for dissertation research. I was looking at the papers of Reinhold Niebhur, Richard John Neuhaus, and the Catholic Bishops Conference. The Catholic Bishops had a Peace Corps Desk and were highly involved in recruiting new members. Most interesting here were a series of letters between Fr. Ivan Illich, who ran a training program for missionaries/peace corps people, and the Bishops. Illich became one of the foremost critics of the Alliance for Progress, the Peace Corps, and American development plans in Latin America, so it was exciting to see his (sometimes incendiary) letters.
What was a challenge you encountered during your research? How did you overcome it?
I found what would probably be a very revelatory series of letters between Pope John Paul II and Zbigniew Brzeziński, but unfortunately, these are restricted by family request – so I cannot access them via FOIA. That’s part of the job I suppose – I just have to find as many meetings and letters between the two from other places as I can.
Was there anything surprising you found in your research?
I found a lot more letters from Donald Rumsfeld than I was expecting – defense industry people apparently really care about religion it seems.
Did you receive any funding to support your research?
What advice would you give to someone interested in pursuing historical research?
Look for published primary sources! Especially if you are working with policymakers, political leaders, social reformers, etc. chances are they wrote copiously and you’ll have tons of material in these books/articles to corroborate with archival materials.
Some images from the National Museum of the American Indian which Will visited after working at the Library of Congress. Will notes that they have an excellent and detailed exhibit on the fight for indigenous sovereignty. Will definitely recommends it if you’re in DC!
From the Archives is a special series for the Fordham History blog which highlights the research experiences of members of the history department in an effort to bothshowcase their work and provide insight for future researchers preparing for their own archival projects.
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On Tuesday, December 4th, graduate students and faculty members gathered to listen to Dr. Yuko Miki and Dr. Christopher Dietrich speak about their research funded by the O’Connell Initiative.
On October 17th, Dr. Johan Mathew, Assistant Professor of History at Rutgers University gave a talk at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus based on research from his prizewinning book, Margins of the Market: Trafficking and Capitalism Across the Arabian Sea (University of California Press, 2016). The talk, titled “Unveiling Money: Counterfeits, Arbitrage, and Finance across the Arabian Sea,” analyzed the influence trafficking and smuggling had on monetary policies across a region that included Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Dr. Mathew spoke about his sources, explaining to his audience that trafficking creates detailed records of trade. This rich source of records includes contracts and family papers from ‘diasporic archives.’ Dr. Mathew explained how the nature of money was changed by merchant networks, by the multiplicity of them and the instability within them. In his lecture, Dr. Mathew defined ‘capitalism’ as a loose system of analysis that covers free labor, private property, and monetary exchange.
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On the evening of Thursday, March 8th, the History Department opened its O’Connell Initiative Annual Conference titled “The United States and Global Capitalism in the Twentieth Century” with Dr. Vanessa Ogle as it’s keynote speaker. Dr. Ogle is a professor of History at University of California-Berkeley with a focus on late-modern Europe. Faculty, graduate and undergraduate students alike filled the McNally Amplitheatre to hear Dr. Ogle’s talk, titled “Twilight Capitalists: The Global Cold War and the Unmaking of Post-War Colonialism”. Continue reading →
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Tuesday, February 27th, the History Department celebrated the launch of Dr. Yuko Miki‘s new book, Frontiers of Citizenship: A Black and Indigenous History of Postcolonial Brazil. Dr. Miki, an Assistant Professor in the History Department, is an expert on Brazil and teaches classes on Latin America at the Lincoln Center Campus. The event was sponsored by the O’Connell Initiative on the Global History of Capitalism. Dr. Miki’s book, published by Cambridge University Press, demonstrates that to understand modern Brazil one must understand the histories of the African Diaspora, as well as those of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Continue reading →
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The O’Connell Initiative on the Global History of Capitalism hosted their first event of the semester on January 26. On the fourth floor of Walsh Library, members of the History Department met for an informal lunch and to hear two of their fellow faculty members, Dr. Samantha Iyer and Dr. David Hamlin, speak about their research that was supported by the O’Connell Initiative. Continue reading →
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On the evening of Thursday, March 8th, the History Department opened its O’Connell Initiative Annual Conference titled “The United States and Global Capitalism in the Twentieth Century” with Dr. Vanessa Ogle as it’s keynote speaker. Dr. Ogle is a professor of History at University of California-Berkeley with a focus on late-modern Europe. Faculty, graduate and undergraduate students alike filled the McNally Amplitheatre to hear Dr. Ogle’s talk, titled “Twilight Capitalists: The Global Cold War and the Unmaking of Post-War Colonialism”. 
