Scholarship on anarchism has historically focused on militant actions from labor organizing to high profile assassinations and insurrection. This panel aims to expand the scope of traditional inquiry by examining often ignored avenues of anarchist political activity, including their engagement with the emerging welfare state, education, and human rights activism, in the first half of the twentieth century in Europe, East Asia, Latin America, and the United States.

Dongyoun Hwang’s paper examines the educational philosophy of the Liming Advanced Middle School organized by Chinese, Korean, and Japanese anarchists in China from 1928-1934 and its revival in post-1945 Korea and even post-reform China of the 1980s. Mark Bray’s paper analyzes the role of transnational anarchist networks in forging broad political alliances to mount a human rights campaign to save the Catalan anarchist pedagogue Francisco Ferrer who was sentenced to death for his alleged role in masterminding the Tragic Week rebellion of 1909. Andrew Cornell’s paper assesses the responses of American anarchists to the New Deal and the growth of the welfare state in the 1930s and 1940s and compares them to the outlooks of their French and British counterparts during the era.

The panel will be chaired by Tom Goyens, author of Beer and Revolution: The German Anarchist Movement in New York City, 1880-1914, and comments will be provided by Ariel Mae Lambe whose research examines the role of anarchists and socialists in the development of transnational Cuban anti-fascism in the 1920s and 1930s. The panel will interest scholars of transnational anarchism, socialism, and radicalism, alternative education, human rights, and the welfare state.