Shows / New Books in American Studies
New Books in American Studies
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/…
Episodes
- New Books in American Studies
Jennifer Chudy, "Some White Folks: The Interracial Politics of Sympathy, Suffering, and Solidarity" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
There is racial inequality in America, and some people are distressed over it while others are not. Some White Folks: The Interracial Politics of Sympathy…
- New Books in American Studies
Beth Blum on Self-Help, Dale Carnegie to Today (JP)
Beth Blum, Assistant Professor of English at Harvard, is the author of The Self-Help Compulsion (Columbia University Press 2019). In 2020, she spoke with John…
- New Books in American Studies
Keith E. Whittington, "You Can't Teach That!: The Battle over University Classrooms" (Polity Press, 2024)
Who controls what is taught in American universities – professors or politicians? The answer is far from clear but suddenly urgent. Unprecedented efforts are…
- New Books in American Studies
Shared Paths: Exploring Jewish and Muslim Experiences in America
This week on International Horizons, John Torpey, Director of the Ralph Bunche Institute, speaks with sociologists Mucahit Bilici and Samuel Heilman about…
- New Books in American Studies
Psychoanalytic Defense Mechanisms in James Baldwin’s "Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone"
This podcast describes a short history of a man who did something we’ve lost in America. That man was James Baldwin who insisted on telling the truth. He…
- New Books in American Studies
Tevi Troy, "The Power and the Money: The Epic Clashes Between Commanders in Chief and Titans of Industry" (Regnery History, 2024)
When U.S. presidents clash with corporate titans, what tips the balance of power? In The Power and the Money: The Epic Clashes Between Commanders in Chief and…
- New Books in American Studies
Dan La Botz, "Riding with the Revolution: The American Left in the Mexican Revolution, 1900-1925" (Brill, 2024)
Dan La Botz's book Riding with the Revolution: The American Left in the Mexican Revolution, 1900-1925 (Brill, 2024) tells the story of Americans who from 1900…
- New Books in American Studies
Donald R. Hickey, "Tecumseh's War: The Epic Conflict for the Heart of America" (Westholme, 2023)
The Shawnee leader Tecumseh came to prominence in a war against the United States waged from 1811 to 1815. In 1805, Tecumseh's younger brother Lalawethika…
- New Books in American Studies
Eric R. Schlereth, "Quitting the Nation: Emigrant Rights in North America" (UNC Press, 2024)
Perceptions of the United States as a nation of immigrants are so commonplace that its history as a nation of emigrants is forgotten. However, once the United…
- New Books in American Studies
Jackie Wang, "Alien Daughters Walk Into the Sun: An Almanac of Extreme Girlhood" (Semiotext(e), 2023)
Jackie Wang is a poet, scholar, multimedia artist, and Assistant Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. She is…
- New Books in American Studies
Aliza Arzt, "Turning the Pages: Conversations Through Time with Rabbi Isador Signer" (Ben Yehuda Press, 2024)
Today I talked to Aliza Arzt about Turning the Pages: Conversations Through Time with Rabbi Isador Signer (Ben Yehuda Press, 2024) In 1924, Rabbi Isidor Signer…
- New Books in American Studies
Elizabeth Korver-Glenn and Sarah Mayorga, "A Good Reputation: How Residents Fight for an American Barrio" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
Neighborhoods have the power to form significant parts of our worlds and identities. A neighborhood's reputation, however, doesn't always match up to how…
- New Books in American Studies
Gretchen Sisson, "Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood" (St. Martin's Press, 2024)
Adoption has always been viewed as a beloved institution for building families, as well as a mutually agreeable common ground in the otherwise partisan…
- New Books in American Studies
Wes Marshall, "Killed by a Traffic Engineer: Shattering the Delusion That Science Underlies Our Transportation System" (Island Press, 2024)
In the US we are nearing four million road deaths since we began counting them in 1899. The numbers are getting worse in recent years, yet we continue to…
- New Books in American Studies
Aviva Dove-Viebahn, "There She Goes Again: Gender, Power, and Knowledge in Contemporary Film and Television Franchises" (Rutgers UP, 2023)
There She Goes Again: Gender, Power, and Knowledge in Contemporary Film and Television Franchises (Rutgers UP, 2023) interrogates the representation of…
- New Books in American Studies
Isaac Blacksin, "Conflicted: Making News from Global War" (Stanford UP, 2024)
How is popular knowledge of war shaped by the stories we consume, what are the boundaries of this knowledge, and how are these boundaries policed or contested…
- New Books in American Studies
Chris Benner and Manuel Pastor, "Charging Forward: Lithium Valley, Electric Vehicles, and a Just Future" (The New Press, 2024)
A clarion call for justice in the quest for clean energy California’s Salton Sea region is home to some of the worst environmental health conditions in the…
- New Books in American Studies
Risa Cromer, "Conceiving Christian America: Embryo Adoption and Reproductive Politics" (NYU Press, 2023)
In 1997, a group of white pro-life evangelical Christians in the United States created the nation’s first embryo adoption program to “save” the thousands of…
- New Books in American Studies
Ryan Emanuel, "On the Swamp: Fighting for Indigenous Environmental Justice" (UNC Press, 2024)
Despite centuries of colonialism, Indigenous peoples still occupy parts of their ancestral homelands in what is now Eastern North Carolina--a patchwork quilt…
- New Books in American Studies
Yolonda Youngs, "Framing Nature: The Creation of an American Icon at the Grand Canyon" (U Nebraska Press, 2024)
Perhaps no American landscape is as iconic as the rainbow rocks of Arizona's Grand Canyon. Yet, as the geographer Yolonda Youngs argues, the Grand Canyon many…
- New Books in American Studies
Zach Fredman, "The Tormented Alliance: American Servicemen and the Occupation of China, 1941–1949" (UNC Press, 2022)
The Tormented Alliance: American Servicemen and the Occupation of China, 1941–1949 (UNC Press, 2022) explores the wartime partnership between China and the…
- New Books in American Studies
Frank R. Baumgartner, “Suspect Citizens: What 20 Million Traffic Stops Tell Us about Policing and Race” (Cambridge UP, 2018)
We recently marked the 50th Anniversary of Terry vs. Ohio, the US Supreme Court case that dramatically expanded the scope under which agents of the state could…
- New Books in American Studies
Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, "Corporatocracy: How to Protect Democracy from Dark Money and Corrupt Politicians" (NYU Press, 2024)
What threatens American democracy and the rule of law? In her new book, Corporatocracy: How to Protect Democracy from Dark Money and Corrupt Politicians (NYU…
- New Books in American Studies
Jonathan Turley, "The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage" (Simon and Schuster, 2024)
“It’s a free country.” Many of us recall saying that as children as we learned that we were American citizens who were endowed with certain rights—such as free…
- New Books in American Studies
Natalie Wall, "Black Expression and White Generosity: A Theoretical Framework of Race" (Emerald Publishing, 2024)
In Black Expression and White Generosity: A Theoretical Framework of Race (Emerald Publishing, 2024), Dr. Natalie Wall takes readers on a journey through the…
- New Books in American Studies
Iris Jamahl Dunkle, "Riding Like the Wind: The Life of Sanora Babb" (U California Press, 2024)
In 1939, when John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath was published, it became an instant bestseller and a prevailing narrative in the nation's collective…
- New Books in American Studies
Eric Steven Zimmer, "Red Earth Nation: A History of the Meskwaki Settlement" (U Oklahoma Press, 2024)
In 1857, the Meskwaki Nation began the long process of piecing their homelands back together. After decades of war, dispossession, and removal at the hands of…
- New Books in American Studies
Israel G. Solares, "Underground Leviathan: Corporate Sovereignty and Mining in the Americas" (U Nevada Press, 2024)
Underground Leviathan: Corporate Sovereignty and Mining in the Americas (U Nevada Press, 2024) explores the emergence, dynamics, and lasting impacts of a…
- New Books in American Studies
Jeffrey Ding, "Technology and the Rise of Great Powers: How Diffusion Shapes Economic Competition" (Princeton UP, 2024)
When scholars and policymakers consider how technological advances affect the rise and fall of great powers, they draw on theories that center the moment of…
- New Books in American Studies
Alexandre Lefebvre, "Liberalism as a Way of Life" (Princeton UP, 2024)
Why liberalism is all you need to lead a good, fun, worthy, and rewarding life—and how you can become a better and happier person by taking your liberal…
- New Books in American Studies
Anat Geva, "The Architecture of Modern American Synagogues, 1950s-1960s" (Texas A&M UP, 2023)
Today I talked to Anat Geva about The Architecture of Modern American Synagogues, 1950s-1960s (Texas A&M UP, 2023). There is no one mandate on how to build the…
- New Books in American Studies
Black Woman on Board: Claudia Hampton, the California State University, and the Fight to Save Affirmative Action
Today’s book is: Black Woman on Board: Claudia Hampton, the California State University, and the Fight to Save Affirmative Action (University of Rochester…
- New Books in American Studies
Camille Owens, "Like Children: Black Prodigy and the Measure of the Human in America" (NYU Press, 2024)
Like Children: Black Prodigy and the Measure of the Human in America (NYU Press, 2024) argues that the child has been the key figure giving measure and meaning…
- New Books in American Studies
Jon Michaels and David Noll, "Vigilante Nation: How State-Sponsored Terror Threatens Our Democracy" (Atria/One Signal, 2024)
Law professors Jon Michaels and David Noll use their expertise to expose how state-supported forms of vigilantism are being deployed by MAGA Republicans and…
- New Books in American Studies
Brianna Nofil, "The Migrant's Jail: An American History of Mass Incarceration" (Princeton UP, 2024)
Today, U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) detains an average of 37,000 migrants each night. To do so, they rely on, and pay for, the use of hundreds…
- New Books in American Studies
Christian Wolmar, "The Liberation Line: The Untold Story of How American Engineering and Ingenuity Won World War II" (Hachette, 2024)
They certainly were not soldiers, yet they suddenly found themselves in uniform, in a foreign land. But, as locomotive drivers, track-workers, conductors…
- New Books in American Studies
Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani, "The Cities We Need: Essential Stories of Everyday Places" (MIT Press, 2024)
An expressive book of prose and photographs that reveals the powerful ways our everyday places support our shared belonging. Where would you take someone on a…
- New Books in American Studies
Jerome E. Copulsky, "American Heretics: Religious Adversaries of Liberal Order" (Yale UP, 2024)
A question has long hung over the the United States regarding the proper role of religion in public life. Those who long for a Christian America claim that the…
- New Books in American Studies
Mary Bridges, "Dollars and Dominion: US Bankers and the Making of a Superpower" (Princeton UP, 2024)
There was nothing inevitable or natural about the rise of US finance capitalism in the early twentieth century. In Dollars and Dominion: US Bankers and the…
- New Books in American Studies
Emily M. Farris and Mirya R. Holman, "The Power of the Badge: Sheriffs and Inequality in the United States" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
The image of the sheriff is deeply embedded in American culture – from pacifist Jimmy Stewart in Destry Rides Again and gun averse Roy Scheider in Jaws to…
- New Books in American Studies
Lynne B. Sagalyn, "Times Square Remade: The Dynamics of Urban Change" (MIT Press, 2023)
What is it about Times Square that has inspired such attention for well over a century? And how is it that, despite its many changes of character, the place…
- New Books in American Studies
Alessandra Seggi, "Youth and Suicide in American Cinema: Context, Causes, and Consequences" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022)
Listener note: This interview contains discussions of suicide. Youth and Suicide in American Cinema: Context, Causes, and Consequences (Palgrave MacMillan…
- New Books in American Studies
Free Speech 70: Michael S. Roth on the Rise of Student Protests, the Fall of Some College Presidents, and Why Liberal Education Matters
The campus protests over conflict in Israel and Gaza have engulfed universities, and led to the resignation of several university presidents. In this podcast…
- New Books in American Studies
J. C. D. Clark, "The Enlightenment: An Idea and Its History" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Enlightenment studies are currently in a state of flux, with unresolved arguments among its adherents about its dates, its locations, and the contents of the…
- New Books in American Studies
Konrad Bercovici, "The Algonquin Round Table: 25 Years with the Legends Who Lunch" (SUNY Press, 2024)
Konrad Bercovici's The Algonquin Round Table: 25 Years With the Legends Who Lunch (SUNY Press, 2024) is a previously unpublished manuscript exploring the rich…
- New Books in American Studies
Courtney Ann Irby, "Guiding God's Marriage: Faith and Social Change in Premarital Counseling" (NYU Press, 2024)
It is well-known that the institution of marriage has changed dramatically in the past few decades. However, very little research has focused on the role of…
- New Books in American Studies
Jeff Schuhrke, "Blue Collar Empire: The Untold Story of U.S. Labor’s Global Anticommunist Crusade" (Verso, 2024)
How the CIA used American unions to undermine workers at home and subvert democracy abroad. Blue Collar Empire: The Untold Story of U.S. Labor’s Global…
- New Books in American Studies
David L. Swartz, "The Academic Trumpists: Radicals Against Liberal Diversity" (Routledge, 2024)
Remember the bleach drinking episode? Remember ‘alternative facts’? Remember ‘I have the best words’? These elements of the Trump presidency spoke to a…
- New Books in American Studies
Andrew W. Kahrl, "The Black Tax: 150 Years of Theft, Exploitation, and Dispossession in America" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
In The Black Tax: 150 Years of Theft, Exploitation, and Dispossession in America (U Chicago Press, 2024), Andrew W. Kahrl uncovers the history of inequitable…
- New Books in American Studies
Jane Little Botkin, "The Pink Dress: A Memoir of a Reluctant Beauty Queen" (She Writes Press, 2024)
Growing up in West Texas, Jane Little Botkin didn’t have designs on becoming a beauty queen. But not long after joining a pageant on a whim in college, she…
- New Books in American Studies
David M. Driesen, "The Specter of Dictatorship: Judicial Enabling of Presidential Power" (Stanford UP, 2021)
At the end of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin was asked whether we have a republic or a monarchy. He replied “A Republic…if…
- New Books in American Studies
Francis Stevens, "The Heads of Cerberus and Other Stories" (MIT Press, 2024)
When three people in Philadelphia inhale dust developed by a scientist who has discovered parallel universes, they are transported into an interdimensional…
- New Books in American Studies
Wayne A. Wiegand, "In Silence or Indifference: Racism and Jim Crow Segregated Public School Libraries" (UP of Mississippi, 2024)
Librarians around the country are currently on a battleground, defending their right to purchase and circulate books dealing with issues of race and systemic…
- New Books in American Studies
Emily Carman, "Independent Stardom: Freelance Women in the Hollywood Studio System" (U Texas Press, 2016)
During the heyday of Hollywood’s studio system, stars were carefully cultivated and promoted, but at the price of their independence. This familiar narrative…
- New Books in American Studies
Robert Polner and Michael Tubridy, "An Irish Passion for Justice: The Life of Rebel New York Attorney Paul O'Dwyer" (Cornell UP, 2024)
In the city of New York from the 1930s to the 1990s, Irish attorney Paul O’Dwyer was a fierce and enduring presence in courtrooms, on picket lines, and in…
- New Books in American Studies
William Cooper, "How America Works and Why It Doesn't: A Brief Guide to the US Political System" (Ad Lib, 2024)
Twenty-first-century America isn’t working the way it’s supposed to. William Cooper's How America Works and Why It Doesn't: A Brief Guide to the Us Political…
- New Books in American Studies
Amir Alexander, "Liberty's Grid: A Founding Father, a Mathematical Dreamland, and the Shaping of America" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
Seen from an airplane, much of the United States appears to be a gridded land of startling uniformity. Perpendicular streets and rectangular fields, all…
- New Books in American Studies
Sarah Lewis, "The Unseen Truth: When Race Changed Sight in America" (Harvard UP, 2024)
In a masterpiece of historical detective work, Sarah Lewis exposes one of the most damaging lies in American history. There was a time when Americans were…
- New Books in American Studies
David Kroening Seitz, "A Different Trek: Radical Geographies of Deep Space Nine" (U Nebraska Press, 2023)
A different kind of Star Trek television series debuted in 1993. Deep Space Nine was set not on a starship but a space station near a postcolonial planet still…
- New Books in American Studies
Alexis Pauline Gumbs, "Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde" (FSG, 2024)
We remember Audre Lorde as an iconic writer, a quotable teacher whose words and face grace T-shirts, nonprofit annual reports, and campus diversity-center…