Dr. Dan Margolies ø Batten Associate
Professor of History, Virginia Wesleyan College
Email: dmargolies@vwc.edu ø phone:
757.455.5716 ø Office:
Blocker 15
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Street
musicians, Guanajuato, Mexico, Chicago: The Globe Stereograph Co., c1906;
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-104249
Research
Interests, briefly stated
I am most interested
in American foreign relations, globalization, and empire. My current research focuses on foreign policy
and law, especially in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I also study the diverse regional impacts of historical
and contemporary globalization, particularly in the South.
I have two new
projects dealing with globalization, although they approach it in radically
different ways.
I am currently writing
a book about extraterritoriality, extradition, and the manipulation of
jurisdiction in the formation of American empire for the University of Georgia
Press. I am also in the process of
editing a forthcoming Blackwell Companion
to Harry S. Truman.
My first book titled Henry
Watterson and the New South: The Politics of Empire, Free Trade, and
Globalization
was published by the University
Press of Kentucky in Fall, 2006.
This book explores the
ways the great
Watterson viewed an
imperial foreign policy and free trade as the key to southern prosperity. He argued that globalization in the form of
free trade in an ever-expanding American empire promised to usher in the final
resolution of sectional inequality and economic instability. These
opportunities offered answers to the sovereignty, development, and racial
questions that had persisted in the South since Reconstruction, and to the
crisis of social disorder and overproduction that developed nationally during
the depression of the 1890s.
Watterson was one of
the strongest advocates of the idea that empire and free trade could neatly
solve the problems of both the South and the nation. "We shall go on in religion preaching
the Gospel of Christ, and Him crucified, and in politics, the doctrines of
Honest Money, Home Rule and Free Trade," he wrote in 1897, in a
characteristic statement of his view.
About
my current projects on empire and globalization in American history
Los charros contrabandistas. Juego de dados [Cowboy Smugglers. Dice Game], by Posada, Library of
Congress Prints and Photographs Division
LC-USZ62-107338
I. Territoriality, Extraterritoriality, and Extradition
in American Foreign Relations
I am examining the
jurisdictional assertions, legal fictions, and constitutional justifications
Americans adopted over time to govern and maintain their imperial system at
home and abroad. My work studies the role of the Constitution in American
expansionism and the relationship between foreign relations law, systems of
distributed power and jurisdiction, and empire, with a particular focus on the United
States-Mexico borderlands.
My research
demonstrates how, at the onset of empire, the
In a series of historical case studies
spanning more than a century, I am exploring how American objectives were
pursued through a global system in which authority and power were distributed
and decentralized in novel ways. Studying
extraterritoriality opens a window into the operation and structure of American
empire. In significant ways, territorial
limits to jurisdiction did not prevent constitutional innovations in imperial
governance; it may even have invited them.
Divided jurisdictions
enshrined a core belief in the utility of distributed and competitive authority
coupled with promotion of economic interests. The balancing of territoriality
and extraterritoriality cleared a space in the law for unilateral,
interventionist, and imperialist action abroad.
I have presented
papers on this topic at the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations
Annual Meeting in 2006, 2007, and 2009, at the Organization of American
Historians conference in 2007 and at the American Studies Association of Korea
conference in Songnisan, South Korea in 2007. I am currently writing a
book on this topic for the University of
Georgia Press which I am completing on my sabbatical.
II. Latinization and Mexican
Regional Music in the South
(photo: Margolies)
Tienda
y Taqueria El Rosario and Southern Gun, Inc.,
I am also working on a
survey of the Latinization of the South by exploring one critical and untapped
aspect of this transformation: the music and cultural geography of the
new Latino (principally Mexican) immigration to the South.
The southeast has
experienced a massive influx of immigrants (one of the largest in the country)
which is unprecedented in Southern history. The diverse, growing,
and vital immigrant Mexican population is transforming the existing, living
Southern folk culture by introducing new music, folkways, and visual cultures
to areas already rich with long established cultural traditions.
I am investigating the
varieties and cultural context of different styles of Mexican regional music
being transplanted to the southeast and to the southern
This aspect of
folklife and history is little studied even as it grows in significance as the
South becomes a new borderland of globalization. While borderlands culture has long been a
topic of interest in cultural histories of the southwest, this
analytical frame has not been utilized in the southeast. This project is interesting and important for
a wide variety of reasons, not least of which is its timeliness given the new
transformations in the region, and the ways it cuts across disciplines. And, the music is great.
(photo
Margolies)
I am also studying
specific folk cultural activities associated with the migrant music, such as
dancing, music festivals, and the rodeo.
I was very pleased to
be able to present my research on Mexican music in the South at the 2009
Society of Ethnomusicology Conference in Mexico City, my first time at that
fascinating conference. I
have also presented aspects of my research and recordings at the Southwest
Texas Popular Culture Association conference, at the Appalachian Studies
Association conference in spring 2007 and spring 2009 and additional
research and new recordings at the American Studies Institute "U.S.
Immigration in the Global Context" conference at Seoul National University
in Fall, 2007. I was invited to present
my photographs at the singular Uncanny America symposium
at Buffalo State College in October, 2008.
I recently published
two articles on migrant music:
"Latino Migrant
Music and Identity in the Borderlands of the New South," Journal of
American Culture 32:2 (June, 2009): 114-125.
“Sé Que Voy a Regresar: Migrant Music and
Globalization in the Nuevo South” in American
Studies 31:1 (May, 2008): 1-24.
(Photo:
Margolies)
El Nuevo
Atlacatl,
(photos:
Margolies)
Panderia, Taqueria, Carniceria,
(photo:
Margolies)
Los Tigres del
Norte playing to thousands at the Gran Jaripeo in Manassas, Virginia, June 2007
(photo:
Margolies)
Aloe
leaves for sale at La Estrella Latina, Roanoke, Virginia, July, 2008
Other Projects:
I’ve become
increasingly interested in the concept of sustainable music, particularly as it
applies to regional music festivals and the politics of intangible cultural
treasures in diverse communities in the U.S. and abroad.
When these various
studies are complete, I am going to return to a longstanding project of
mine which examines the establishment of civil aviation routes in the Pacific
after World War II.
Music Projects & My Film
Along with the study
of history, the great passion in my life is music. I enjoy working as a scholar on musical
topics (and have come to regard ethnomusicology as probably the most
interesting academic field) and I especially like to play music.
I am most interested
in old time music (and variants like country and bluegrass), Conjunto music,
and Mexican regional music like Son Jarocho and Son Huasteca. I play
old time clawhammer banjo and old time fiddle. I particularly like the
fiddling of the Cumberland Plateau and the banjo style of southwestern
Virginia. In the summer I frequent old time fiddlers conventions
throughout the South as much as possible. I am also extremely interested
in the music of the Texas-Mexico borderlands, especially Conjunto. I
have begun studying Conjunto button accordion and bajo sexto in the traditional
style. The banjo is a lot easier!
I spent ten months
learning to play the Kayagum at the National Center for
Korean Traditional Performing Arts. I
have just started learning to play the jarana huasteca, a marvelous instrument
on which I have my work cut out for me.
For related information
on all of these styles of music, see my page of Old Time Music, Bluegrass, Blues, Cajun,
Mexican-American Music links.
My wife Skye Ochsner
Margolies and I are currently completing a documentary we filmed about bluegrass,
gospel, and country music in Tidewater
We filmed at
Here are a few of my publications that are
available online.
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