“Progress for Whom? State Building and Progressive Era Reform: Evidence from Austin’s Local Agenda,” 10/4 Colloquium with University of Memphis Prof. Brooke N. Shannon

Drawing on city council meeting minutes from 1900-1940, Brooke N. Shannon, University of Memphis Assistant Professor of Political Science, Urban Affairs, and Public Policy, will track how the national ambitions of the Progressive Era were made visible at the local level in Austin, TX, where the city’s burgeoning bureaucracy and land use policy agenda simultaneously promoted governmental efficiency while striving to maintain white supremacist order. The talk will be held on October 4 at 3:30pm in Jesse Hall 410.

Abstract

Progressive Era (1890s-1920s) reforms aimed at local government prioritized “good governance,” a term with competing goals of governmental efficacy, anti-corruption, and preserving white supremacy. Although we know a great deal about national-level policy and outcomes during this period, we lack a comprehensive understanding of how this movement impacted local policy. I focus on reforms at the local level to demonstrate the mechanisms behind municipal policymakers empowering the bureaucracy to streamline local power and maintain white supremacist order. Using city council meeting minutes in Austin, Texas, from 1900 to 1940, I demonstrate how urban governance was impacted by national Progressive Era reforms, visible in the burgeoning local administrative state and policymaking in land use that simultaneously promoted coeval goals of efficiency and white supremacy.

Brooke N. Shannon, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and in the School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Memphis. Her work centers on local government and public policy. She graduated from the University of Texas Government Department in 2022 with a dissertation entitled The City Agenda: Local Government and National Influence in the Policy Agenda, 1900-2020.