Jordan T. Kuck was the recipient of the 2011 AABS Dissertation Grant. He used the prize to fund the archival work for his dissertation, which is titled “The Dictator without a Uniform: Kārlis Ulmanis, Agrarian Nationalism, and Interwar Latvia.” His work focuses on the themes of democracy, nationalism, and authoritarianism and analyzes the relationship and continuities between these key historical forces, using the case study of Latvia to argue that the upswing in virulent ethnic nationalism and the surprisingly thin line between democracy and authoritarianism led to a sort of transnational path to dictatorship which shaped the interwar period.
Jordan conducted research at the Latvian State Historical Archive (Latvijas Valsts vēstures arhīvs), the Latvia State Archive of Audiovisual Documents (Latvijas Valsts kinofotofonodokumentu arhīvs), and the National Library of Latvia (Latvijas Nacionālā bibliotēka). He has presented his work at the First Congress of Latvian Historians (Latvijas vēsturnieku pirmais congress) and will also give a talk at the upcoming 23rd AABS conference in Chicago.
Jordan is a PhD candidate in Modern European History at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He received an IIE-U.S. Department of State Fulbright Fellowship, a U.S. Department of Education Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship, and was selected for the UTK Chancellor’s Award for Extraordinary Professional Promise.