I am proud to share that Dr. Dan Margolies, Professor of History and
Chair of the History Department and the American Studies Program, has
been awarded the 2018 Maurice L. Mednick Memorial Fellowship by the
Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges. His project will focus on
“Jurisdictional Disputes over Offshore Submerged Lands and the
Spatiality of State Sovereignty, 1947-1953.”
Through his
research, Dr. Margolies will further investigate tension between state
sovereigntist claims and state affirmation of empire by examining the
state political and legal responses to three Supreme Court cases,
starting with United States v. California, the 1947 case which clarified the boundaries between ownership (dominium), jurisdiction, and sovereignty as expressed in the foreign relations imperium. According to Margolies’ project description, this case, and the rapidly following U.S. v. Louisiana and U.S. v. Texas
cases of 1950 which built directly upon it, were ultimately overtaken
by political agitation in one of the most intensely waged domestic
political campaigns of the postwar era. Despite being later overturned,
he says, these cases created a potent case for imperial governance as a
new postwar modality arguably as significant as a recognized cornerstone
of U.S. global extraterritorial jurisdiction such as the 1945 U.S. v. Alcoa
decision. This grant project will complete archival research for a
chapter on the submerged lands (“Tidelands”) controversy for Margolies’
current book project, Zones of Sovereignty and Exception: United States Jurisdictional Regimes Through the Law of the Sea Conventions.
Dr.
Margolies has been on the faculty at Virginia Wesleyan since 2000. His
research specialty is American foreign relations (the U.S. in the world)
and foreign relations law. He has a strong interest in
interdisciplinary work and has published widely in history and in other
fields. He teaches a wide variety of classes on topics such as U.S.
Foreign Relations, the Civil War, Sound and Noise in American History,
Space and Place in the Global USA, Globalization and Empire, Old and New
South, the Nineteenth Century, and Radicalism and Violence in American
History. He also teaches courses on Asian (particularly Korean) history,
Appalachian traditional music, Texas-Mexican conjunto music, and the
history and practice of beekeeping.
The Maurice L. Mednick
Memorial was created in 1967 in honor of a young Norfolk industrialist
who died from accidental causes and whose family and business associates
wished to perpetuate his name by establishing a memorial that would
emphasize his and the donors’ strong interest in higher education.
Administration of the Mednick Memorial Fund is vested in the Virginia
Foundation for Independent Colleges to encourage the professional
development of college professors and improve their academic competence
through fellowships for research and advanced study.
Please join
me in congratulating to Dr. Margolies on this prestigious award. He
joins an impressive group of Virginia Wesleyan faculty members who have
earned this designation throughout the years. I am honored to work among
such talented individuals who are so strongly committed to excellence
in both teaching and scholarship.
