In Building New Deal Liberalism: The Political Economy of Public Works, Jason Scott Smith, a candidate for the Ph.D. in History, examines the history of the United States during the Great Depression, placing public works programs at the center of our understanding of the New Deal and American liberalism in the period. With the aim of advancing a reinterpretation of New Deal reform, the dissertation takes up the political discourses surrounding the passage of the different pieces of public works legislation, the actual public works built, the experience of the construction industry with the Public Works Administration and the Works Progress Administration, and the relationship between the works agencies and the unemployed, the building trades, and organized labor.