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WORK TITLE: Senator James Eastland
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY: Groningen
STATE:
COUNTRY: Netherlands
NATIONALITY: Dutch
http://www.rug.nl/staff/m.zwiers/cv * http://lsupress.org/authors/detail/maarten-zwiers/ * http://southernstudies.olemiss.edu/maarten-zwiers-on-james-o-eastland-and-teaching-the-south-in-the-netherlands/ * http://rug.academia.edu/MaartenZwiers/CurriculumVitae * http://rug.academia.edu/MaartenZwiers
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Male.
EDUCATION:Attended the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; University of Groningen (Netherlands), M.A. (two; cum laude), 2005, Ph.D., 2012; University of Mississippi, Oxford, M.A., 2007.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Historian, writer, and educator. University of Groningen, Netherlands, teaching assistant, 2003-04, research assistant, 2004, researcher, 2007-12, lecturer, 2011-14, assistant professor, 2014–; University of Mississippi, Oxford, research assistant, 2005-07, assistant to provost emeritus, 2006-07, graduate assistant, 2007; University College Roosevelt, Middelburg, Netherlands, visiting postdoctoral fellow, 2009-10.
AWARDS:Grants from organizations, including the Nicolaas Mulerius Foundation, Harry S. Truman Presidential Library, Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation, Netherlands American Studies Association, Fulbright Foundation, Netherland-America Foundation, and Roosevelt Study Center.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Maarten Zwiers is a Dutch historian, writer, and educator who specializes in United States history, especially the history of the South. He earned two master’s degrees and a Ph.D. from the University of Groningen, in the Netherlands. Zwiers also studied abroad at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to attend the University of Mississippi, Oxford, where he obtained an M.A. in 2007. Zwiers has held a variety of positions at the University of Groningen, including teaching assistant, research assistant, researcher, lecturer, and assistant professor. While studying at the University of Mississippi, Oxford, he served as a research assistant, an assistant to the provost emeritus, and a graduate assistant at the school. Zwiers was also a visiting postdoctoral fellow at University College Roosevelt. He has received grants from organizations, including the Nicolaas Mulerius Foundation, Harry S. Truman Presidential Library, Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation, Netherlands American Studies Association, Fulbright Foundation, Netherland-America Foundation, and Roosevelt Study Center.
In 2015 Zwiers released his first book, Senator James Eastland: Mississippi’s Jim Crow Democrat. In this volume he profiles the Mississippi politician, who is best known for opposing racial equality and organized labor. Zwiers compares Eastland to J. Strom Thurmond, a South Carolina senator and a member of the group of Southern Democratic leaders called the Dixiecrats. He explains that the Dixiecrats began having a tense relationship with other Democratic Party leaders during the middle of the 1900s. The tension culminated with what is called the Dixiecrat revolt. By the mid-1950s, Southern states became increasingly affiliated with the Republican Party. Zwiers explains that Eastland remained a member of the Democratic Party, despite criticism from his constituents.
Catherine A. Conner offered a mixed review of Senator James Eastland in the Journal of Southern History. Conner suggested: “Zwiers misses an opportunity to concretely link states’ rights to free enterprise.” Conner added: “Zwiers rarely shows how Eastland wielded his power on the Judiciary Committee to protect Mississippi’s state sovereignty against what he perceived to be an encroaching federal government. Nonetheless, Zwiers uses Eastland to reveal a much more politically dynamic Mississippi than its history as a one-party state suggests.” In an article on the Hotty Toddy Web site, a Southern historian named Dan T. Carter is quoted as having described the book as a “gracefully written study.” In the same article, University of Mississippi professor emeritus, Charles Reagan Wilson, is said to have asserted: “This nuanced study brings new ideas on Eastland’s importance in facilitating compromise at the national political level while maintaining a militant Southern segregationist position.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Journal of Southern History, August, 2016, Catherine A. Conner, review of Senator James Eastland: Mississippi’s Jim Crow Democrat, p. 725.
ONLINE
Academia.edu, https://rug.academia.edu/ (April 9, 2017), author profile.
Hotty Toddy, http://hottytoddy.com/ (October 12, 2015), review of Senator James Eastland.
Louisiana State University Press Web site, http://lsupress.org/ (April 9, 2017), author profile.
University of Groningen Web site, http://www.rug.nl/ (April 9, 2017), author faculty profile.
University of Mississippi, Center for the Study of Southern Culture Web site, http://southernstudies.olemiss.edu/ (November 13, 2015), Becca Walton, author profile.
Maarten Zwiers
University of Groningen, History, Faculty Member | History +20
Maarten studied History and American Studies at the University of Groningen. He spent a semester at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill during fall 2002 as an exchange student, taking classes in American historiography, Civil War history, and U.S. history after World War II. In 2005, he graduated cum laude from the University of Groningen with a double MA in History of Political Culture and American Studies. His thesis studied the construction of Confederate nationalism. In fall 2005, he started with the graduate program in Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi on a Fulbright scholarship. He graduated in May 2007. In October 2012 he received his PhD in History. Maarten is currently freelance historian and a part-time assistant professor at the University of Groningen. His first book, published by Louisiana State University Press, examines the career of U.S. Senator James Eastland of Mississippi and the political transformation of the post-World War II South.
Phone: +31 50 363 8848
Address: University of Groningen
Department of History
PO Box 716
9700 AS Groningen
the Netherlands
Harmonie Building
Room 1312.0525
Reviews:
!
Review of
The Three Governors Controversy: Skullduggery, Machinations, and the Decline of Georgia’s Progressive Politics
, by Charles S. Bullock III, Scott E. Buchanan, and Ronald Keith Gaddie,
Journal of Southern History
(forthcoming).
!
Review of
The Age of Destruction: How 1965 Transformed America
, by James T. Patterson,
American Studies
53, no. 2 (2014).
!
Review of
Red Fortress: The Secret Heart of Russia’s History
, by Catherine Merridale, American Book Center (December 2013).
Papers, invited lectures, and presentations (selection):
!
October 27, 2016: “Aryans and Anglo-Saxons: Segregationist Visions of the Postwar World,” Forging the American Century: World War II and the Transformation of U.S. Internationalism, Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
!
October 5, 2016: “Segregation and Capitalism in the Cold War Caribbean,” Biennial Conference of the International Association of Inter-American Studies, Santa Barbara, CA.
!
July 7, 2016: “On the Road to Redemption: Race and Reconciliation in the Post-Jim Crow South,” Historians of the Twentieth Century United States (HOTCUS) Annual Conference, Middelburg, the Netherlands.
!
October 14, 2015: “Reviewing Eastland’s Record,” Overby Center for Southern Journalism and Politics, Oxford, MS.
!
April 4, 2014: “The Iron Curtain and the Color Line: Cold War Politics and Segregation in the Deep South,” European Association for American Studies Biennial Conference, The Hague, the Netherlands.
!
April 4, 2014: Panel chair, “Racial Conflict and Racial Justice in the Deep South Since the Civil War,” European Association for American Studies Biennial Conference, The Hague, the Netherlands.
!
November 9, 2013: “The Specter of Communism and the Ghost of Jim Crow: The Contemporary Origins of American Conservative Discourse,” Weapons of Mass Seduction: Rhetoric and Political Discourse in the United States, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
!
November 2, 2012: “The Democratic Party and the (New) South,” Netherlands American Studies Association Presidential Election Forum, Leiden University, Leiden, the Netherlands.
!
April 11, 2010: “Conspiracy and Compromise in Segregationist Ideology: James Eastland and the Cold War South,” British Association for American Studies 55
th
Annual Conference, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK.
!
November 7, 2009: “Segregationist Thought and Strategy: The Case of U.S. Senator James Eastland,” Southern Historical Association 75
th
Annual Meeting, Louisville, KY.
!
March 27, 2009: “In Defense of a Lost Cause: The States’ Rights Democrats and the Election of 1948,” 17
th
National Amerikanistendag, University of Groningen, Groningen, the Netherlands.
!
March 24, 2006: “Life in the Deep South,” The Netherland-America Foundation Connection, Center for Architecture, New York, NY.
Teaching:
Department of American Studies, University of Groningen:
!
The Americas I: The American Century and Beyond Department of History, University of Groningen: -
B.A. Thesis Tutorial -
Cultural History: A Sense of Place -
Formation of State and Nation II: Modern History -
Globalization II: Contemporary History -
Historical Skills -
History of Political Culture: The Construction of Power -
History of Political Culture: The Other America (regional identity and the U.S. South) -
History of Political Culture: Origins of the Republican South
-
M.A. Research Seminar: U.S. Presidential Campaigns -
Minor American History I: Inventing America (lectures and seminars) -
Minor American History II: Dreams and Realities -
Minor American History III: Freedom Now! The U.S. Civil Rights Movement -
Sources and Methods History of Political Culture Department of International Relations and International Organization, University of Groningen: -
History of International Relations II (lectures and seminars) Dutch Studies program, University of Groningen: -
Dutch Identity and Collective Memory -
Dutch Studies: Between America and Europe
Seminars:
!
April 25-27, 2011: Fifth International Ph.D. Seminar, Roosevelt Study Center, Middelburg, the Netherlands.
!
April 21-25, 2008: Spring Academy: American History, Culture, and Politics, Heidelberg Center for American Studies, Heidelberg, Germany.
Other activities (selection):
04-2016 – present: Coordinator U.S. History minor, University of Groningen. 03-2016 – present: Board member history alumni association, University of Groningen. 05-2015 – present: Member PR committee, Department of History, University of Groningen. 02-2012 – 11-2012: Member of the organizing committee U.S. Election Night, Groninger Forum. November 19, 2009: Instructor at in-service training for high school teachers. Topic: “Decolonization and Cold War in Vietnam” (subject of 2010 Dutch final exams in History). 09-2005 – 10-2006: Volunteer at different conferences and symposiums organized by the Center for the Study of Southern Culture and the Southern Foodways Alliance. 03-2002 – 06-2002: Member of the curriculum reprogramming committee American Studies. Besides the activities listed above, I have appeared regularly on Dutch national radio (
BNN Today
,
Bureau Buitenland
,
Met het oog op morgen
,
NOS News
, and
OVT
(Radio 1),
NTR Academie
(Radio 5), and Business News Radio) to comment on current affairs from an historian’s perspective. I have also served as member and chairman of discussion panels on studying in the United States organized by the Fulbright Center in Amsterdam, and I participated in information sessions for prospective history students at the University of Groningen.
Professional affiliations:
!
European Association for American Studies (EAAS)
!
Netherlands American Studies Association (NASA)
!
Southern Historical Association (SHA)
References:
!
Doeko Bosscher, Professor of Contemporary History Emeritus, University of Groningen (d.f.j.bosscher@rug.nl).
!
Dan Carter, Education Foundation Professor of History Emeritus, University of South Carolina (carterDT@mailbox.sc.edu).
!
Adam Fairclough, Raymond and Beverly Sackler Professor of American History, Leiden University (a.fairclough@hum.leidenuniv.nl).
!
Kees van Minnen, Professor of American History, Ghent University, Director of the Roosevelt Study Center, Middelburg (ca.v.minnen@zeeland.nl).
!
Ted Ownby, Professor of History and Southern Studies, Director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, University of Mississippi at Oxford (hsownby@olemiss.edu).
MAARTEN ZWIERS ON JAMES O. EASTLAND AND TEACHING THE SOUTH IN THE NETHERLANDS
Home - Blog - Maarten Zwiers on James O. Eastland and Teaching the South in the Netherlands
By Becca Walton on November 13th, 2015
MAARTEN ZWIERS ON JAMES O. EASTLAND AND TEACHING THE SOUTH IN THE NETHERLANDS
File Nov 10, 10 27 10 AM
Maarten Zwiers, interviewed by Chris Colbeck.
We’re starting an occasional series of interviews of visiting speakers at the Center by Southern Studies grad students who are working with Dr. Andy Harper and the Southern Documentary Project. These interviews will explore a scholar’s inspiration to pursue a particular line of research and their experiences teaching courses on the American South in different contexts.
Our first interview was done by second year MA student Christopher Colbeck, who spoke with Dr. Maarten Zwiers after his Brown Bag lecture on 1970s politics and culture in the South on November 4. Zwiers, himself a graduate of the Southern Studies MA program, is now an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Groningen. He published Senator Jim Eastland: Mississippi’s Jim Crow Democrat with LSU Press in June 2015.
Maarten Zwiers
MAARTEN ZWIERS, an assistant professor in contemporary and U.S. history at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, specializes in regional history and the history of political culture.
dr. M. (Maarten) Zwiers
Curriculum vitae
dr. M. Zwiers
Organisational unit:
Faculty of Arts
Telephone:
+31 50 363 8848
E-mail:
m.zwiers@rug.nl
Homepage
Maarten Zwiers studied History and American Studies at the University of Groningen and did coursework at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 2005, he graduated cum laude with a double M.A. in History of Political Culture and American Studies. His thesis studied the construction of Confederate nationalism. In fall 2005, he started with the graduate program in Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi on a Fulbright scholarship. He graduated in May 2007. In October 2012, Zwiers received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Groningen, where he currently works part-time as assistant professor in contemporary and U.S. history.
Work Experience:
Oct. 2014 - Present: Assistant Professor, Faculty of Arts, Department of History, University of Groningen.
Sept. 2011 – Sept. 2014: Lecturer, Faculty of Arts, Department of History, University of Groningen.
Sept. 2009 - July 2010: Visiting predoctoral fellow, Roosevelt Study Center, Middelburg.
Sept. 2007 - Oct. 2012: Ph.D. researcher, Department of History, University of Groningen.
Jan. 2007 – May 2007: Graduate assistant, Dept. of Southern Studies, University of Mississippi at Oxford.
Sept. 2006 – May 2007: Assistant to the Provost Emeritus, University of Mississippi at Oxford.
Dec. 2005 – Jan. 2007: Research assistant, Dept. of Archives and Special Collections, University of Mississippi at Oxford.
Feb. 2004 – July 2004: Research assistant, Faculty of Arts, Department of History, University of Groningen.
Sept. 2003 – Jan. 2004: Teaching assistant, Faculty of Arts, Department of American Studies, University of Groningen.
Education:
2005-2007: M.A. Southern Studies, University of Mississippi at Oxford.
1999-2005: M.A. (drs.) American Studies, University of Groningen.
1998-2005: M.A. (drs.) History, specialization Political Culture, University of Groningen.
Fall 2002: Exchange student, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
1992-1998: Athenaeum (pre-university education), Menso Alting College, Hoogeveen.
Awarded scholarships and prizes:
Nicolaas Mulerius Foundation Grant (2014)
Richard A. Baker Graduate Student Research Travel Grant (2010).
Harry S. Truman Presidential Library Research Grant (2010).
Moody Grant - Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation (2010).
Netherlands American Studies Association Research Grant (2010).
Roosevelt Study Center Research Grant (2008 and 2016).
Lucille and Motee Daniels Award, best paper in Southern Studies graduate program (2007).
Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds Scholarship (2006).
Fulbright Scholarship (2005).
Hendrik Muller’s Vaderlandsch Fonds Scholarship (2005).
VSBFonds Scholarship (2005).
Netherland-America Foundation Award (2002).
QUOTED: "Zwiers misses an opportunity to concretely link states' rights to free enterprise."
"Zwiers rarely shows how Eastland wielded his power on the Judiciary Committee to protect Mississippi's state sovereignty against what he perceived to be an encroaching federal government. Nonetheless, Zwiers uses Eastland to reveal a much more politically dynamic Mississippi than its history as a one-party state suggests."
Senator James Eastland: Mississippi's Jim Crow Democrat
Catherine A. Conner
Journal of Southern History. 82.3 (Aug. 2016): p725.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Southern Historical Association
http://www.uga.edu/~sha
Listen
Full Text:
Senator James Eastland: Mississippi's Jim Crow Democrat. By Maarten Zwiers. Making the Modern South. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2015. Pp. [x], 293. $45.00, ISBN 978-0-8071-6001-5.)
Maarten Zwiers's book Senator James Eastland: Mississippi's Jim Crow Democrat joins a growing literature that reconsiders white southern politicians who held powerful sway over national politics from the New Deal to the Reagan Revolution. No longer mere segregationists in these retellings, Mississippi's James O. Eastland, South Carolina's J. Strom Thurmond, and others are cold warriors who stifled civil rights and labor unions in the name of states' rights and free enterprise. Such revisionism, coupled with recent explorations of Sun Belt politics, reveals the bipartisan, multiregional, and diverse ideological origins of the New Right and the decline of the Democratic South. To enter these debates, Zwiers uses a political biography of Eastland, one with a purposeful focus on the relationship between Mississippi Democrats and the national Democratic Party in the middle third of the twentieth century. Eastland becomes the great compromiser within this milieu, moving from staunch Dixiecrat to loyalist Democrat even as his party moved toward racial liberalism.
Yet the tension between the national and state Democratic parties is not exactly the full story of this book. The Democratic Party's retaliation after the Dixiecrat revolt, Zwiers suggests, kept Eastland in line. Zwiers continually asserts that Eastland's position as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee explains why the senator remained a Democrat even as Mississippi began to move toward the Republican Party by the mid-1950s. Though many of his constituents challenged his position, Eastland maintained that staying within the Democratic Party--and keeping his chairmanship--was the best way to keep the state's interests represented in Washington, D.C.
Zwiers succeeds remarkably well in documenting such internal tension among Mississippi Democrats. Within this story line, Eastland becomes a moderate segregationist in an era of massive resistance, a characterization that only makes sense against the backdrop of Governor Ross Barnett's hardline actions that incited a riot at the University of Mississippi over James Meredith's admission. The ghosts of the Dixiecrats were ones that Eastland, though a founding father, could not control. And indeed, Eastland becomes a background character in the last few chapters that focus on the classical civil rights era. Zwiers's investigation of gubernatorial races and the transition of the state's GOP from the Black and Tans to rebranded Dixiecrats, overrides his intended story line and reveals a longer history of white southern Republicans and the internal disintegration of the Democratic South. Such historical work makes Zwiers's book invaluable to scholars of modern American politics.
Who Eastland was, however, remains a mystery, though it needs unraveling to further add to the scholarly conversations about southern and national politics. Democratic senator Patrick A. (Pat) McCarran of Nevada mentored the young Eastland on the Judiciary Committee, a relationship that reveals ideological similarities between the South and the West before the regions banded together under the GOP. Zwiers also treats Eastland's racism, anti-unionism, and anticommunism as givens, the unexplained worldview of a patrician planter from the Delta. Yet Zwiers misses an opportunity to concretely link states' rights to free enterprise, the de facto ideology promoted by the New Right, free of white supremacy. Of equal importance is the unexplored inconsistency between Eastland's championing of free enterprise and his state's dependence on federal largesse, which he secured through his position on the Senate Agriculture Committee. With the exception of a few anecdotes of dinners and drinks, one humorously featuring Senator Edward M. Kennedy, ever-flowing whiskey, and an office plant in desperate need of rehydration, Zwiers rarely shows how Eastland wielded his power on the Judiciary Committee to protect Mississippi's state sovereignty against what he perceived to be an encroaching federal government. Nonetheless, Zwiers uses Eastland to reveal a much more politically dynamic Mississippi than its history as a one-party state suggests.
CATHERINE A. CONNER
North Carolina State University
Conner, Catherine A.
QUOTED: "gracefully written study."
"This nuanced study brings new ideas on Eastland’s importance in facilitating compromise at the national political level while maintaining a militant Southern segregationist position."
Eastland Biography to be Reviewed at Overby Center Wednesday
October 12, 2015
0
EastlandMaarten Zwiers, author of a new biography of Sen. James O. Eastland, will be at the Overby Center for Southern Journalism and Politics at 2 p.m. Wednesday, to talk about his book and assess the long record of a man who represented Mississippi in the U.S. Senate for nearly four decades.
Joining him to conduct a conversation about Eastland will be Jim Abbott, who served for many years as editor of the Indianola Enterprise-Tocsin in Sunflower County, where Eastland made his home.
The program will be held in the Overby Center Auditorium on the Ole Miss campus. It is free and open to the public.
Zwiers obtained a master’s degree in Southern Studies from the University of Mississippi in 2007 while studying here on a Fulbright scholarship. He is a cum laude graduate of the University of Groningen in his native country, the Netherlands, and later returned there to receive a PhD in history, specializing in American studies. He also did coursework at the University of North Carolina. He currently teaches at his alma mater, the University of Groningen, and also works as a freelance historian.
Zwiers drew heavily from Eastland’s papers at the J.D. Williams Library at Ole Miss, but conducted prodigious research at other locations to produce the first complete biography of a memorable Mississippi figure who championed segregationist causes and blocked civil rights legislation in the Senate until his retirement in 1978.
“Senator James Eastland: Mississippi’s Jim Crow Democrat” was published this year by LSU Press.
Dan T. Carter, a prominent Southern historian, says that Zwiers’ “gracefully written study captures a much more complete, shrewd and effective figure in the intersection between regional and national politics.”
The book has also been hailed by Charles Reagan Wilson, professor emeritus at Ole Miss where he headed the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. “This nuanced study brings new ideas on Eastland’s importance in facilitating compromise at the national political level while maintaining a militant Southern segregationist position,” Wilson said.