Colleen P. Woods F'11

Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowships 2011
Doctoral Candidate
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Bombs, Bibles, and Bureaucrats: The United States, the Philippines, and the Making of Global Anti-Communism, 1945-1960

This dissertation examines how the Philippines became the primary postwar site for the development and dissemination of a transnational anti-communist politics. It examines how Philippine elites and their U.S. allies managed local struggles over land reform, armed insurgency, democratic governance, labor rights, and religion between 1945 and 1960. During the late 1940s and 1950s, U.S. policymakers and Filipino elites developed what they conceived of as exportable models for postcolonial development. Characterized by Filipino leaders and U.S. policymakers as early sites of tension in a global Cold War, this dissertation considers how these local political struggles were transformed into laboratories for the development of a globally oriented anti-communist movement.