Edmund F. Wehrle

Education 

UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, COLLEGE PARK
Ph.D. in American History awarded May 22, 1998

UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, COLLEGE PARK
M.A.  American History, 1992

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
B.A., English Literature, 1987
 

Book 

 
 


Between a River and a Mountain: The AFL-CIO and the Vietnam War
(Ann Arbor: Univeristy of Michigan Press, 2005).

An economic, political, cultural, and international study of the AFL-CIO’s  “unstinting” support for the Vietnam War, describing how that support divided and weakened organized labor by the 1970s.  Drawing on a remarkable series of recently-released Cold War-era, AFL-CIO records, Between a River and a Mountain reinterprets American labor’s place in the shaping of foreign policy and highlights U.S. labor’s mentoring relationship with South Vietnam’s large but fragile labor movement. http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetail
Desc.do?id=88540.

Teaching 

Assistant Professor, (U.S. History), Eastern Illinois University, Fall 2000 to the present. Teaching U.S. Surveys, Twentieth-Century World, U.S. Diplomatic, Contemporary America, Graduate Seminar in Diplomatic History, History of the Vietnam Wars.

Assistant Professor, (U.S. and World History) Department of Humanities, U.S. Coast Guard Academy, Fall 1999-Spring 2000. Teaching U.S. history surveys and upper division course treating history of American relations with Third World Countries.

Adjunct Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of Maryland at College Park, 1998-1999.  Among other courses taught two sections of American History survey, to classes of roughly 240 students, supervised five teaching assistants.

Adjunct Assistant Professor, Coppin State College, Baltimore, MD, Spring 1998. Taught two sections of the American history survey, to 1865, to classes of over forty students.

Teaching Assistant at the University of Maryland, Department of History, 1992-1997;
Conducted four weekly discussion sections; provided guest lectures in classes of 100 to 300 students; prepared and graded papers and examinations; counseled students.

Awarded Rundel Prize for Outstanding History Graduate Student, University of Maryland, 1996, including commendation for excellence in teaching.

Teaching Fields Include: U.S. Labor, U.S Diplomatic, U.S. survey, World History, Western Civilization survey, Medieval Europe, Modern East and Southeast Asian History.
 
 

Articles/Chapters 
“Guns, Butter, Leon Keyserling, the AFL-CIO and the Fate of Full-Employment Economics,” The Historian, 66 (Winter 2004): 730-748.

“Welfare and Warfare: American Organized Labor Approaches the Military-Industrial Complex, 1949-1964” Armed Forces & Society, 4 (Summer 2003): 525-546.

“Labor’s Longest War: Trade Unionists and the Vietnam Conflict,” Labor’s Heritage, 11, (Winter/Spring 2002): 50-65.

“‘A Good Bad Deal’: John F. Kennedy, Averell Harriman, and the Neutralization of Laos, 1960-1962,” in Lori Lynn Bogle, ed. The Cold War, Vol. II: National Security Planning from Truman to Reagan and from Stalin to Gorbachev, (Routledge Press, 2001).

“‘No More Pressing Task Than Organization in Southeast Asia’: The AFL-CIO Approaches the Vietnam War, 1947-1964,” Labor History 42 (August 2001).

“Did the American Labor Movement Decline in the Post-war Era?” in Robert Allison, ed. History in Dispute, Vol. II: American Social Movements, 1945-2000, (Manley, Inc, 2000), 190-193.

“Did the Labor Movement Miss an Opportunity for Obtaining Advances in the 1930s?” in Robert Allison, History in Dispute, Vol. III: American Social and Political Movements, 1945-2000, (Manly, Inc., 2000), 190-194.

“Plumbers and Presidents: Labor Sources for Diplomatic Historians,” The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Newsletter, 29 (December 1998).

“‘A Good Bad Deal’: John F. Kennedy, Averell Harriman, and the Neutralization of Laos, 1960-1962,” Pacific Historical Review, 67 (August 1998): 349-378.

“A New Deal for America: Labor Comes Into Its Own,” Social Education, 60 (September 1996): 260-263.

“‘For a Healthy America’: Labor’s Struggle for National Health Insurance, 1943-1949,” Labor’s Heritage (Summer 1993): 28-45.

“‘Work Begins Today’: Quaker Volunteers in Depression-Era Kentucky, 1933,” The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, 90 (Fall, 1992): 345-367.

Book reviews in publications including Presidential Studies Quarterly, The Journal of Military History, International Labor and Working-Class History, Journal of Social History, Law and History Review, Journal of Southern History.
 

Public History Projects 
Catoctin Mountain Park: A Historic Resource Study, (National Park Service, Washington, DC, April 2000). Awarded contract by National Park Service to conduct an extensive historic resource study of Catoctin National Park. Study detailed the history of the park site from prehistoric times, through the establishment and construction of the park during the New Deal, to the founding of presidential retreat later renamed Camp David. Published online at http://www.nps.gov/cato/hrs/hrs.htm.
Awards and Fellowships 
Summer Research and Creative Activity Award, Eastern Illinois University, 2004.

Achievement and Contribution Award in Teaching, Eastern Illinois University, 2002.

        Gerald R. Ford Foundation Research Grant, 1998.
Moody Grant from the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation ($750 grant-in-aid), 1997.

Rundel Prize for Outstanding History Graduate Student, University of Maryland, 1996.

Hearst Travel Grant, University of Maryland, 1995, 1996.

George Meany Memorial Archives Fellowship, 1991-1992.
 
 

Conference Papers 
“The Paradox of Western-style Trade Unionism in South Vietnam." Presented at "Vietnam and the West: New Approaches" Conference, Western Connecticut State University, Danbury, CT., December 4, 2005.

Globalization, Anticommunism, and War.” Presented at BlackburnCollege Labor Studies Symposium, Carlinville, IL., March 4, 2005.


“Strikes, Strife and Nation-Building: The AFL-CIO in Guyana and South Vietnam, 1963-1964.” Presented at 29th Annual meeting of the Social Science and History Association, November 21, 2004.

“U.S. Trade Unionism and Third World Revolutions,” Presented at Midwest Association for Latin American Studies Conference, November 8, 2003.

“Nixon, Vietnam, and the Blue-Collar Blues.” Presented at 25th Annual North American Labor History Conference, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, October 16, 2003.

“The Foundation for the Infinitely Greater Prosperity which is within Our Capacity For Tomorrow: Leon Keyserling, the AFL-CIO, and the Fate of Full Employment Economics, 1953-1975." Presented at Economic and Business History Historical Society Annual Conference, Memphis, TN, April 25, 2003.

“Encountering South Vietnamese Organized Labor: The AFL-CIO and the Vietnamese Confederation of Labor, 1947-1975.” Presented at Annual Meeting of Social Science History Association, October 26, 2002.

“American Organized Labor and the Postwar Defense Establishment.” Paper Presented at The Cold War Army, 1947-1989, Conference of Army Historians, Arlington, VA, August 7, 2002.

“`Release Our Jailed Leaders’: American and South Vietnamese Labor, 1968.” Paper Presented at Annual Meeting of North American Labor History Conference, Detroit, MI, October 19, 2001.

“Guns and Butter: American Organized Labor Approaches the Military-Industrial Complex in the Post-war Era.” Paper presented at annual meeting of Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR), American University, June 14, 2001.

“Rank-and-File Memory: History and the Revival of Organized Labor.” Paper presented at 21st Annual Teachers Conference, History at the Grassroots: Local History and Its Audiences, Charleston, IL, October 28, 2000.

“Labor in the Quagmire: The AFL-CIO, the Vietnamese Confederation of Labor, and the Vietnam War, 1965-1975.” Paper presented at annual meeting of Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR), Washington, DC, June 18, 1998.

“Tran Quoc Buu and the Forgotten History of the South Vietnamese Labor Movement.” Paper presented at annual meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Association for Asian Studies, West Chester University, West Chester, PA, October 25, 1997.

“‘Better to Fight Here Than at Staten Island or the Golden Gate’: The AFL-CIO Approaches the Vietnam War, 1950-1964." Paper presented at annual meeting of Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR), June 19-22, 1997.

“‘George, This is Going to be a Long, Long War’: George Meany, Tran Quoc Buu, and the Coming of the Vietnam War.”  Paper Presented at Spring meeting of the New England Historical Association Spring, Boston, MA, April 26, 1997.

“Warfare and Welfare: Labor, Full-Employment, and Defense Spending in Post-War America.”  Paper presented at the Ninth Symposium of the George Meany Memorial Archives, November 17, 1996.

“‘Facades and Substance’: John F. Kennedy, Averell Harriman, Souvanna Phouma and the Neutralization of Laos, 1961-1962."   Paper presented at annual meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Association for Asian Studies, Seaton Hall University, October 27, 1996.
 

Professional Activities 
Graduate Committee, History Department, Eastern Illinois University, 2002 to present

Department Representative to University Professional of Illinois, Local 4100, 2003 to present

Chair, U.S. 20th Century Search Committee, Eastern Illinois University, 2002-2004.

Graduate Committee, Eastern Illinois University, 2001-2004.

Awards Committee, Eastern Illinois University, History Department, 2001-2003.

Search committee South Asian historian, Eastern Illinois University, 2000-2001

Search committee selecting senior 20th century historian for Department of History, University of Maryland, 1997.

Search committee for the Dean of Arts and Humanities, University of Maryland, 1996.

President of the History Graduate Student Association, 1995-1996.

Vice President of the History Graduate Student Association, 1994-1995.

Fellow at the George Meany Memorial Archives, Silver Spring, MD, 1991-1992: fellowship included service as Editorial Assistant to quarterly scholarly journal Labor’s Heritage.

Assistant Archivist at the University of Notre Dame Archives, 1988-1990.