The First World War (1914-1918) introduced the world to the horrors of warfare on an industrial scale. But it also gave rise to the one of the most dynamic and active anti-war movements of the 20th century. This research explores the activities of the local Pacific Northwest anti-war movement during World War I. National resistance to the militarist and imperialist policies of the United States peaked during the war period, and the Seattle anti-war movement provides a fascinating case study of how socialists, anarchists, labor unions and pacifists organized a robust anti-war movement. Using a wide variety of contemporary local newspapers, letters, activist memoirs and labor union meeting minutes, this study weaves together the story of Seattle’s radical and pacifist organizations during the First World War. This study finds that despite aggressive persecution from the Federal government, conservative labor unions and pro-war business interests, the Seattle anti-war coalition continued to offer active and radical resistance to militarist policies up until the end of the war.

Much of the wisdom written on the subject of Iraqi railways confides in the German interest of the 19th century in extending a railway from Baghdad to Haydarpasa, World War I, and the birth of the British Mandate, as noted in Sean McMeekin’s The Berlin-Baghdad Express: The Ottoman Empire and Germany’s Bid for World Power (2010). As a result, there is a need within the academic literature regarding British controlled Iraqi railways and the correlation of concessions to various oil companies during the 1920s. This study has also found that the U.S. had a covert interest in the shaping of the Iraqi nation, while most research has focused on the British imperial agenda concerning the railways. By using data based on the Records of Department of State Relating to the Internal Affairs of Asia, 1910-1929, which includes confidential correspondence between the American Consulate of Baghdad and Washington DC and pamphlets regarding the infrastructure, along with integral secondary source material like Peter Sluglett’s Britain in Iraq: Contriving King and Country (2007, 2nd ed.), this study addresses both a wide variety of identities such as the intellectuals and elite as well as Bedouin tribes and Kurds within the Iraqi nation, who were embedded within this new imperial reality, and the U.S. clandestine approach to addressing the issue of oil concessions. The methodology employed within this research project consists of both the imperialist agenda of Britain and the U.S. embryonic interests in Iraq, while conveying the consciousness of those imperialized and/or colonized. Therefore, this had implicated that there was a lack of sectarian violence prior to the creation of Iraq, and as such, there were new ethnic identities and nationalisms that resulted from its creation of which they were inherently influenced by the prospects of oil and the extension of railways throughout Iraq.

Phonic Earth connects communities of the modern world through music, a language that is understood globally on emotional and physical levels. Melody, voice, instruments and timbre hold history within them and also redefine and transform our cultures throughout time. Through music we are able to understand each other’s communities on intimate and transcendent levels. Phonic Earth traveled to Puerto Rico, The Faroe Islands and the Northwest to produce films that depicted social and political histories through musical contexts in different regions. Each location reveals unique cultural stories and information. In Puerto Rico we investigated how the diverse blending of eighteenth century Afro-Caribbean, European and Indigenous groups led to the creation of the musical genres bomba and plena which influence Salsa and Hip Hop. Phonic Earth explored the relationships of music to land, culture and emotion through Faroese contexts. The Kingo Gregorian chant sung in the Faroe Islands preserves the history of French, Norwegian and other North American countries where this historical music has disappeared. The final part of Phonic Earth’s cinematic project, will be filmed inc collaboration with NW Native American/Indigenous communities to document the influence of historical music and storytelling on current Native American music culture. Each community in the world holds a complex identity made up of the individuals of the region. Phonic Earth focuses on empowering these individuals with resources to tell their stories, showcase their music and document local events through film. While the world is made up of an infinite amount of faces, backgrounds and cultures, music is a familiar medium that people connect to on a global scale. It is our aim to connect the viewer to the community on an intimate level which is why Phonic earth looks at the world through sound.