Date
11-11-2026
Department
College of Arts and Sciences
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy in History (PhD)
Chair
Martin Catino
Keywords
Dorothy Thompson, Women's History, Journalism, World War II, Gender Studies, Intersectionality
Disciplines
History
Recommended Citation
Lucas, Richard David, "Dorothy Thompson and the Rise of the “Woman Journalist”" (2026). Doctoral Dissertations and Projects. 9092.
https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/doctoral/9092
Abstract
"Dorothy Thompson and the Rise of the 'Woman Journalist'" reexamines the career of journalist Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961), focusing on the events of July–August 1934 that transformed her from a foreign correspondent into an international symbol of resistance to Nazism. Tracing her evolution from suffrage activist and expatriate reporter to the first American woman to write a nationally syndicated column for a major U.S. daily and prominent interventionist radio commentator, the study situates Thompson within the history of women in journalism and interwar European politics. Combining newly accessible Bundesarchiv records with the Dorothy Thompson Papers at Syracuse University, contemporary press coverage, and state and intelligence-related materials underused in earlier biographies, the dissertation advances a causal argument. Thompson's 1934 expulsion was precipitated not by the regime's wounded pride over her criticism of Hitler, as the official account maintained, but by her clandestine role in helping Zenzl Mühsam, widow of the murdered anarchist playwright Erich Mühsam, escape across the German border into Czechoslovakia. Drawing on Kimberlé Crenshaw's framework of intersectionality, the dissertation argues that no single identity explains Thompson's capacity for this act or her lifelong concealment of it. The convergence of her identities as a woman, a bisexual individual in a culture of enforced discretion, a celebrated American journalist, and the wife of a Nobel laureate made both possible. By grounding intersectionality in archival political history, the study revises conventional biographical narratives and recovers covert forms of political agency available to interwar women that histories of journalism and diplomacy have overlooked.
