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Mary L. Dudziak is the Judge Edward J. and Ruey L. Guirado Professor of Law, History and Political Science at the University of Southern California Law School. Her research focuses on international approaches to American legal history. She has written extensively about the impact of foreign affairs on civil rights policy during the Cold War and other topics in 20th-century American legal history. Her newest book is a transnational history about Thurgood Marshall’s work with Kenya nationalists in the 1960s, Exporting American Dreams: Thurgood Marshall's African Journey (Oxford University Press, 2008). Her new projects include a book that explores ideas about time and temporality in our thinking about "wartime": War Time: A Critical History, and a book that looks broadly at the impact of war on American law and politics during the 20th century. Her work has been supported by fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and Membership in the School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.

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About the Books

Exporting American Dreams: Thurgood Marshall's African Journey

"In this gem of a book, Mary Dudziak brings vividly to life the important but little known history of Thurgood Marshall's intense involvement with Kenya during its journey toward independence in the 1960s....A powerful and poignant story, beautifully told."--Gary Gerstle, Vanderbilt University

Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy

"Impressively researched and vividly written. . . . Convincingly demonstrates how Cold War pressures both empowered and constrained the civil rights movement's quest to build a more just America." Rogers M. Smith author of Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History

"Groundbreaking."--American Lawyer

"Dudziak's book will inspire a reconsideration of postwar civil rights history."--Alex Lubin, American Quarterly

September 11 in History

"I am exhilarated by the collective wisdom, creativity, and insight of this unusual yet riveting distillation of perspectives on September 11."—Bruce Lawrence, author of Shattering the Myth: Islam beyond Violence

Legal Borderlands: Law and the Construction of American Borders

"By weaving together colorful and contentious strands of culture, history and law, these essays make a compelling argument that "it is in its bleeding borders that law itself, and with it American identity, is constructed, contested, and made meaningful." Harvard Law Review

Works-in-Progress:

Law, War, and the History of Time

War Time: A Critical History (under contract with Oxford University Press)

How War Made America: A Twentieth Century History (under contract with Oxford University Press)

Mary L. Dudziak

books and selected works