Episode 12: You Will Never Be One of Us

In this episode, Ryan speaks with his WT colleague Dr. Timothy Paul Bowman, historian and author of You Will Never Be One of Us: A Teacher, a Texas Town, and the Rural Roots of Radical Conservatism, published in 2022 by the University of Oklahoma Press. Bowman’s book tells the story of Wayne Woodward, who in 1975 was fired from his job as an English teacher at La Plata Junior High in Hereford, Texas for founding a local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. Bowman argues that Woodward was fired because both he and the ACLU — with its reputation for fighting for workers’ rights — were seen as threats by the Anglo power structure in Hereford. The book also traces the historical roots of Panhandle conservativism, which, Bowman argues, run deeper than is often assumed in conservative historiography. The interview also touches on what the rural version of this ideology contributed to the rise of the New Right more generally, as well as what Woodward’s decades-old legal battle has to tell us about contemporary political polarization.

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Episode 13: Dirty Knowledge

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Episode 11: Running Out