Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Many attempts were made in the early twentieth century to create a literacy requirement for immigration to the U.S. Similarly, numerous efforts were made to establish literacy as a condition for naturalized citizenship during the same Congressional debates. While literacy was made a provision of immigration in the 1917 Immigration Act, it was never enacted as a requirement for citizenship. In this paper, I ask what explains these different policy outcomes through analysis of early twentieth century federal Congressional debates. I argue that competing conceptions of moral citizenship, especially the meaning of morality in defining civic participation and the relationship between individuals and the state, help to explain these different policy outcomes. Drawing on recent work integrating the study of citizenship and immigration, I conclude with some implications of these findings for the regulation of citizenship and immigration in democratic societies.

Publication Type: Presentation Proposal
Abstract: Drawing from research and experience, Cheryl Charles offers a perspective on how community service, "green engineering" and other sustainable practices yield abundant rewards. Community health is enhanced, the environment is conserved, employee productivity is improved, and civic literacy is supported.

Publication Type: Session Paper
Abstract: The 1930s marked a highpoint of labor and radical activism in the United States. In order to counter this shift to the left, corporate America organized a coordinated propaganda campaign. In the context of the cold war, corporations, advocacy groups, and trade associations actively promoted the idea that the interests of the nation were coterminous with the success of business, and portrayed the communist threat to the American way of life through the lens of consumer capitalism. The emerging medium of television uncritically adopted this perspective due to the mutually dependent relationship between the government and television news producers in this period. Cold War ideology was fundamentally about constructing the American nation and the American “way of life” as one of democracy and freedom guaranteed by a free market. By the 1960s, television had become a national and nationalizing medium due to its institutional structure and organization. This legacy persists to this day.

In this paper, I perform a close reading of 269 news reports on the 1997 UPS strike from the three major network channels (ABC, CBS and NBC), and argue that the strike was framed, both explicitly and implicitly, in nationalist terms. I show how the nationalist strike narrative promotes cross-class solidarity or a common “national interest” at the expense of other forms of community such as those forged along the class lines. In the process, the narrative serves to universalize the interests of the capitalist class. In short, the narrative repeats a theme raised over half a century ago by Charles Wilson, then president of GM, that what was good for GM was good for America.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper offers a discussion of three questions central to the practice of indigenous autonomy in southern Mexico. Why did the federal government grant it? Is it consistent with liberal democratic principles? Does it benefit indigenous Mexicans?