Research Post #1 Update

Update

The books I mentioned earlier will still be handy to some extent, but the focus of my project has changed, and will be considerably more anchored in the archives. I still plan to research non-intervention and the embargoes, and my project will still be politically oriented, but I will focus on the people who broke away from the isolationism of their time, who were not directly involved in the governmental politics surrounding non-intervention, about and from whom there is lots of archival material, including copies of The Daily Worker, pamphlets on microfilm, letters, and various other selections from ALBA and elsewhere. I plan to juxtapose my findings from these archival materials with knowledge about both the governmental and public politics surrounding non-intervention 1) to explore why and how these “ground-level” participants came to reject isolationism, the popular political stance of their era, 2) to shed some light on the limitations of their information, and 3) to examine how these limitations shaped their efforts to understand and change policy.

A preliminary outline of the questions to be addressed might look like this:

-What did persons/groups a, b, and c know about policies/political interactions x, y, and z?

----How did they perceive x, y, and z?

----What did they do about it?

-What are the whole stories of x, y, and z as we know them today?

----How did x, y, and z affect a, b, and c, and vice versa?

-What can be inferred about the consequences of this "knowledge gap" experienced by a, b, and c?

-If a, b, and c had more knowledge about x, y, and z, how might their history have gone differently? [Whether this last question is appropriate is yet to be determined]

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Professor Fernández and Peter Carroll for their guidance and insights.

To any of my classmates who have not already done so, I recommend consulting Professor Fernández about your final project. He is very helpful and approachable.