The Empire Strikes Back: The United States and the Geopolitical origins of Neoliberalism

This lecture looks at how the global economic crisis of the 1970s sapped the energy of New Deal liberalism and paved the way for a major shift in both the American and global economy. This shift culminated in neoliberalism supplanting New Deal liberalism as the dominant form of political and economic governance both in and beyond the United States.

 

Will is an Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream in History at the Department of Historical and Cultural Studies. His research areas include Post-Civil War to mid-twentieth century U.S. history, Labor and Working-Class history, the history of capitalism, and the history of empire. His current book project with the University of Illinois Press, titled, To the Water’s Edge: U.S. Empire and Merchant Sailors, examines the connection between domestic class conflict and U.S. imperial expansion between the 1880s and the 1920s. His latest article, “Does Exclusion Follow the Flag: Merchant Sailors and U.S. Imperial Expansion, 1895-1906,” was published in The International Review of Social History. His next project is a social and labor history of Lend Lease. Will’s work has been presented in Canada, the United States, and India.

 

This event is organized by the Undergraduate Society of American Studies and co-sponsored by the Centre for the Study of the United States.