The working title of my Ph.D. project is: "Midwestern Radicalism
and the Scandinavian-Americans: The Case of Wisconsin
Progressivism, 1890-1914." My aim is twofold: to reach a deeper
understanding of Wisconsin progressivism and to analyze how and
why so many Scandinavian-Americans (particularly Norwegians)
joined the movement.
Because I will be comparing three nationality groups, my view of
ethnicity will probably be broader than that characterized by
many regionally oriented transplantation studies. In analyzing
politics, I will be more interested in studying how the political
elite utilized or ignored ethnicity in politics than in
investigating the behavior of the grassroots, which has already
been treated in great detail by several proponents of the "new
political history" (or ethnocultural interpretation). My approach
to the study of ethnicity and politics has been inspired by my
reading of Richard L. McCormick's 1986 critique of the
ethnocultural interpretation of American politics.
My source material, which I gathered while studying at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1989/90 and 1994/95, consists
of the correspondence of political leaders (especially
Scandinavian-Americans), Scandinavian-language newspapers, and
roll calls for the Wisconsin legislature for the period
1895-1913.
Joern Broendal
University of Copenhagen
Department of History
Njalsgade 80
2300 Copenhagen S
Denmark