Inter-American affairs; civil-military relations in Latin America; Indigenous people in Mexico and Central America; activities of far-right groups in twentieth century North America; the War Against Some Drugs both in the United States and internationally; the rise of “conspiracy culture” and moral panics.

Raiders of Red Atlantis: Nazis, the New Age, and the New Deal.

Based on extensive archival research in the United States (Washington, DC, Oklahoma, Oregon, Washington State, Arizona) this project explores how important aspects of FDR’s New Deal administration of the 1930s were influenced in both positive and negative ways by individuals who embraced esoteric beliefs—Theosophy in particular. Foremost among these was Henry Wallace, secretary of agriculture during the first two Roosevelt administrations, and an outspoken proponent of racial equality, industrial corn production, and hemispheric cooperation. He was also a practicing Theosophist at a lodge in Des Moines before going to Washington, where he kept his beliefs secret even while they influenced a number of his projects while in office. This even got him involved in promoting the Good Neighbor policy in Mexico and Central America.

More sinister were the activities of American Nazi leader William Dudley Pelley, leader of the fascist Silver Legion of America—in particular his long campaign to discredit the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 and denounce Commissioner John Collier of the Bureau of Indian Affairs as a tool of an alleged international Jewish-Communist conspiracy. In addition to drawing influence from more conventional white supremacist thinkers of the time (such as Lothrop Stoddard and Madison Grant), Pelley also claimed to channel his racist beliefs from paranormal sources. Ultimately he was jailed for treason after Pearl Harbor, but echoes of his work can still be heard in modern late-night documentaries about Ancient Astronauts, Atlantis, and fanciful ideas about indigenous people of the Americas lacking the capacity to construct pyramids on their own.       

HIST 1117: America to 1865
HIST 1119: The United States, 1865-Present
HIST 2220: The United States as World Power, 1898-1991
HIST 2255: Immigration, Ethnicity, and Race in the United States
HIST 2263: Conflict and Society in the 20th Century
HIST 2271: Latin America before Independence
HIST 2273: Latin America after Independence
HIST 3346: Indigenous People in Latin America
HIST 3357: Topics in American Culture
         “American Fear: Conspiracism, Moral Panic, and Political Paranoia since Colonial Times”
HIST 4731: Topics in American History
         “Psychoactive Revolutions and Counterrevolutionary Drug Wars in Modern American History”
HIST 4732: Topics in the History of the Americas
         “The United States and Latin America during the Cold War”
         “Revolutions in Latin America: Haiti, Mexico, and Cuba”

"‘Mexicans are Good Flyers’: Militarized Airpower, Aviation Idols, and Aviation Diplomacy in Revolutionary Mexico.” Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 40, no. 3 (2015): 411-428.

"Magonismo, the Revolution, and the Indigenous/Nationalist Appropriation of Mexican Anarchism," in Shaffer, K., de Laforcade, G. (eds.) Defiance of Boundaries: Anarchism in Latin American History (University Press of Florida, 2015).

Co-editor with D. Nault, Globalization and Human Rights in the Developing World (Great Britain: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).