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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
Yiman Wang, "To Be an Actress: Labor and Performance in Anna May Wong's Cross-Media World" (U California Press, 2024)
Between 1919 and 1961, pioneering Chinese American actress Anna May Wong established an enduring legacy that encompassed cinema, theatre, radio, and American…
- New Books in American Studies
Kate Hext, "Wilde in the Dream Factory: Decadence and the American Movies" (Oxford UP, 2024)
Hollywood is haunted by the ghost of playwright and novelist Oscar Wilde. Wilde in the Dream Factory: Decadence and the American Movies (Oxford University…
- New Books in American Studies
Nik Ribianszky, "Generations of Freedom: Gender, Movement, and Violence in Natchez, 1779-1865" (U Georgia Press, 2021)
In Generations of Freedom: Gender, Movement, and Violence in Natchez, 1779-1865 (U Georgia Press, 2021), Nik Ribianszky employs the lenses of gender and…
- New Books in American Studies
Susan Stryker, "When Monsters Speak: A Susan Stryker Reader" (Duke UP, 2024)
Susan Stryker is a foundational figure in trans studies. When Monsters Speak: A Susan Stryker Reader (Duke UP, 2024) showcases the development of Stryker’s…
- New Books in American Studies
Edward Kaplan, "The End of Victory: Prevailing in the Thermonuclear Age" (Cornell UP, 2022)
Waging and winning a nuclear war have been called “thinking about the unthinkable” but that’s exactly what Edward Kaplan and I discussed in our interview about…
- New Books in American Studies
Mitchel P. Roth and Mahmut Cengiz, "Murder by Mail: A Global History of the Letter Bomb" (Reaktion Books, 2024)
Murder by Mail: A Global History of the Letter Bomb (Reaktion, 2024) by Dr. Mitchel P. Roth and Dr. Mahmut Cengiz unfolds the gripping history of weaponized…
- New Books in American Studies
Neoliberalism and the University, Part 1
This is the Global Media & Communication podcast series. This podcast is a multimodal project powered by the Center for Advanced Research in Global…
- New Books in American Studies
Robert Baker, "Making Modern Medical Ethics: How African Americans, Anti-Nazis, Bureaucrats, Feminists, Veterans, and Whistleblowing Moralists Created Bioethics" (MIT Press, 2024)
The little-known stories of the people responsible for what we know today as modern medical ethics. In Making Modern Medical Ethics: How African Americans…
- New Books in American Studies
Shaul Magid on the Jewish Radicalism of Meir Kahane (JP, Eugene Sheppard)
For Kahane, the greatest enemy of the Jews was not the black nationalist, the greatest enemy of the Jews was not the Arabs. The greatest enemy of the Jews was…
- New Books in American Studies
Jessica S. Henry, "Smoke But No Fire: Convicting the Innocent of Crimes that Never Happened" (U California Press, 2021)
Jessica Henry's Smoke But No Fire: Convicting the Innocent of Crimes that Never Happened (U California Press, 2021) explores a shocking but all-too-common kind…
- New Books in American Studies
Pawel Armada, "Humanism As Realism: Three Essays Concerning the Thought of Paul Elmer More and Irving Babbitt" (St. Augustine's Press, 2023)
Originally published in Polish in 2019 by The Lethe Foundation, Humanism As Realism: Three Essays Concerning the Thought of Paul Elmer More and Irving Babbitt…
- New Books in American Studies
Jim Higgins, "Sweet, Wild and Vicious: Listening to Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground" (Trouser Press, 2024)
From the time he began recording with the Velvet Underground in the 1960s until his death in 2013, Lou Reed released nearly 50 original albums. In Sweet, Wild…
- New Books in American Studies
Stephen J. Pyne, "Pyrocene Park: A Journey Into the Fire History of Yosemite National Park" (U Arizona Press, 2023)
How is Yosemite National Park a microcosm for our warming, fire-driven, world? Arizona State University emeritus professor Stephen Pyne answers that question…
- New Books in American Studies
Christopher T. Fan, "Asian American Fiction After 1965: Transnational Fantasies of Economic Mobility" (Columbia UP, 2024)
After the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act loosened discriminatory restrictions, people from Northeast Asian countries such as South Korea, Taiwan, Japan…
- New Books in American Studies
David Pozen, "The Constitution of the War on Drugs" (Oxford UP, 2024)
The U.S. government's decades-long "war on drugs" is increasingly recognized as a moral travesty as well as a policy failure. The criminalization of substances…
- New Books in American Studies
Laura Yares, "Jewish Sunday Schools: Teaching Religion in Nineteenth-Century America" (NYU Press, 2023)
The earliest Jewish Sunday schools were female-led, growing from one school in Philadelphia established by Rebecca Gratz in 1838 to an entire system that…
- New Books in American Studies
Musa al-Gharbi, "We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite" (Princeton UP, 2024)
How a new "woke" elite uses the language of social justice to gain more power and status--without helping the marginalized and disadvantaged. Society has never…
- New Books in American Studies
Prithi Kanakamedala, "Brooklynites: The Remarkable Story of the Free Black Communities that Shaped a Borough" (NYU Press, 2024)
Meet the Black Brooklynites who defined New York City's most populous borough through their search for social justice. Before it was a borough, Brooklyn was…
- New Books in American Studies
Sheila Curran Bernard, "Bring Judgment Day: Reclaiming Lead Belly's Truths from Jim Crow's Lies" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
Known worldwide as Lead Belly, Huddie Ledbetter (1889-1949) is an American icon whose influence on modern music was tremendous - as was, according to legend…
- New Books in American Studies
Derek Taira, "Forward without Fear: Native Hawaiians and American Education in Territorial Hawai'i, 1900-1941" (U Nebraska Press, 2024)
During Hawai‘i’s territorial period (1900–1959), Native Hawaiians resisted assimilation by refusing to replace Native culture, identity, and history with those…
- New Books in American Studies
Kathleen Loock, "Hollywood Remaking: How Film Remakes, Sequels, and Franchises Shape Industry and Culture" (U California Press, 2024)
From the inception of cinema to today’s franchise era, remaking has always been a motor of ongoing film production. Hollywood Remaking: How Film Remakes…
- New Books in American Studies
Lindsay Goss, "F*ck The Army!: How Soldiers and Civilians Staged the GI Movement to End the Vietnam War" (NYU Press, 2024)
F*ck The Army! How Soldiers and Civilians Staged the GI Movement to End the Vietnam War (NYU Press, 2024) offers a comprehensive history of the FTA, an antiwar…
- New Books in American Studies
Miriam Eve Mora, "Carrying a Big Schtick: Jewish Acculturation and Masculinity in the Twentieth Century" (Wayne State UP, 2024)
For twentieth-century Jewish immigrants and their children attempting to gain full access to American society, performative masculinity was a tool of…
- New Books in American Studies
Jonathan Branfman, "Millennial Jewish Stars: Navigating Racial Antisemitism, Masculinity, and White Supremacy" (NYU Press, 2024)
Jewish stars have longed faced pressure to downplay Jewish identity for fear of alienating wider audiences. But unexpectedly, since the 2000s, many millennial…
- New Books in American Studies
Rosemary Pennington, "Pop Islam: Seeing American Muslims in Popular Media" (Indiana UP, 2024)
As Muslim American representation becomes more prominent in popular culture, how are they continued to be portrayed? Rosemary Pennington's new book Pop Islam…
- New Books in American Studies
40 Years of Purple Rain: What to Make of the Movie/Album in 2024
It’s the UConn Popcast, and Purple Rain, Prince’s semi-autobiographical, semi-concert film, hit cinemas 40 years ago this week. The movie followed the album of…
- New Books in American Studies
Postscript: Changing Dynamics in the Presidential Race, 2024
The Republican Party held its nominating convention a week ago in Milwaukee, formally nominating former President Donald Trump as the standard-bearer for the…
- New Books in American Studies
Steven Powell, "Love Me Fierce In Danger: The Life of James Ellroy" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
Love Me Fierce In Danger: The Life of James Ellroy (Bloomsbury, 2023) is the story of James Ellroy, one of the most provocative and singular figures in…
- New Books in American Studies
Ben Kaplan and Danny Parkins, "Pipeline to the Pros: How D3 Small-College Nobodies Rose to Rule the NBA" (Triumph Books, 2024)
Today I talked to Ben Kaplan about his new book (co-authored with Danny Parkins) Pipeline to the Pros: How D3 Small-College Nobodies Rose to Rule the NBA…
- New Books in American Studies
Quantifying the American Mind: George Gallup, and the Promise of Political Polling
Early pollsters thought they had the psychological tools to quantify American mind, thereby enabling a truly democratic polity that would be governed by a…
- New Books in American Studies
Patrick McKelvey, "Disability Works: Performance After Rehabilitation" (NYU Press, 2024)
In 1967, the US government funded the National Theatre of the Deaf, a groundbreaking rehabilitation initiative employing deaf actors. This project aligned with…
- New Books in American Studies
Steven K. Bailey, "Target Hong Kong: A True Story of U.S. Navy Pilots at War" (Osprey, 2024)
In January 1945, the final year of the Pacific War, Japanese-held Hong Kong became the site of coordinated attacks by the U.S. Navy on Japanese warships and…
- New Books in American Studies
David E. Kaiser, “The Road to Dallas: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy” (Harvard UP, 2008)
There are some topics that historians know not to touch. They are just too hot (or too cold). The assassination of JFK is one of them. Most scholars would say…
- New Books in American Studies
Gavriel D. Rosenfeld and Janet Ward, "Fascism in America: Past and Present" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
Has fascism arrived in America? In Fascism in America: Past and Present (Cambridge UP, 2023), Gavriel D. Rosenfeld and Janet Ward have gathered experts to…
- New Books in American Studies
Kevin Mattson, "We're Not Here to Entertain: Punk Rock, Ronald Reagan, and the Real Culture War of 1980s America" (Oxford UP, 2020)
In his new book, We're Not Here to Entertain: Punk Rock, Ronald Reagan, and the Real Culture War of 1980s America (Oxford UP, 2020), Kevin Mattson documents…
- New Books in American Studies
Lisandro Perez, “Sugar, Cigars and Revolution: The Making of Cuban New York” (NYU Press, 2018)
A new book reveals an incredible slice of Cuban-American history that’s been all but forgotten until now. Lisandro Perez‘s Sugar, Cigars and Revolution: The…
- New Books in American Studies
Arie Perliger, "American Zealots: Inside Right-Wing Domestic Terrorism" (Columbia UP, 2020)
In an unsettling time in American history, the outbreak of right-wing violence is among the most disturbing developments. In recent years, attacks originating…
- New Books in American Studies
Breanne Fahs, "Burn It Down: Feminist Manifestos for the Revolution" (Verso, 2020)
Burn It Down: Feminist Manifestos for the Revolution (Verso, 2020), Breanne Fahs has curated a comprehensive collection of feminist manifestos from the…
- New Books in American Studies
Donald L. Miller, "Vicksburg: Grant’s Campaign that Broke the Confederacy" (Simon and Schuster, 2019)
In Vicksburg: Grant’s Campaign that Broke the Confederacy (Simon & Schuster, 2019), Donald L. Miller explains in great detail how Grant ultimately succeeded in…
- New Books in American Studies
Francine Banner, "Beyond Complicity: Why We Blame Each Other Instead of Systems" (U California Press, 2024)
Beyond Complicity: Why We Blame Each Other Instead of Systems (University of California Press, 2024) by Dr. Francine Banner is a fascinating cultural diagnosis…
- New Books in American Studies
Steve Gillon, “The Kennedy Assassination: 24 Hours After” (Basic Books, 2009)
You could fill a large library with books about JFK’s assassination. We’ve even touched on the subject here. The topic of the transfer of power from JFK to…
- New Books in American Studies
Tiffany Gill, "To Turn the Whole World Over: Black Women and Internationalism" (U Illinois Press, 2019)
Black women undertook an energetic and unprecedented engagement with internationalism from the late nineteenth century to the 1970s. In many cases, their work…
- New Books in American Studies
Matt Stoller, "Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy" (Simon & Schuster, 2020)
In Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy (Simon & Schuster, 2019), Matt Stoller explains how authoritarianism and populism have…
- New Books in American Studies
Michael J. Douma, "The Slow Death of Slavery in Dutch New York: A Cultural, Economic, and Demographic History, 1700-1827" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
Original and deeply researched, The Slow Death of Slavery in Dutch New York: A Cultural, Economic, and Demographic History, 1700-1827 (Cambridge University…
- New Books in American Studies
Pekka Hämäläinen, "Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power" (Yale UP, 2019)
The names of Red Cloud, Sitting Bull, and Crazy Horse are often readily recognized among many Americans. Yet the longer, dynamic history of the Lakota - a…
- New Books in American Studies
Ujju Aggarwal, "Unsettling Choice: Race, Rights, and the Partitioning of Public Education" (U Minnesota Press, 2024)
What do universal rights to public goods like education mean when codified as individual, private choices? Is the “problem” of school choice actually not about…
- New Books in American Studies
Hamilton Nolan, "The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor" (Hachette Books, 2024)
Inequality is America's biggest problem. Unions are the single strongest tool that working people have to fix it. Organized labor has been in decline for…
- New Books in American Studies
Sören Schoppmeier, "Playing American: Open-World Videogames and the Reproduction of American Culture" (De Gruyter, 2023)
Videogames have always depicted representations of American culture, but how exactly they feed back into this culture is less obvious. Advocating an…
- New Books in American Studies
Diana P. Parsell, "Eliza Scidmore: The Trailblazing Journalist Behind Washington's Cherry Trees" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Eliza Scidmore (1856-1928) was a journalist, a world traveler, a writer, an amateur photographer, the first female board member of the National Geographic…
- New Books in American Studies
Freeman's Challenge: The Murder That Shook America's Original Prison for Profit
Today’s book is: Freeman’s Challenge: The Murder That Shook America’s Original Prison for Profit (U Chicago Press, 2024), by Dr. Robin Bernstein, which tells…
- New Books in American Studies
Kevin Loughran, "Parks for Profit: Selling Nature in the City" (Columbia UP, 2022)
A new kind of city park has emerged in the early twenty-first century. Postindustrial parks transform the derelict remnants of an urban past into distinctive…
- New Books in American Studies
Thomas Zeller, "Consuming Landscapes: What We See When We Drive and Why It Matters" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2022)
What we see through our windshields reflects ideas about our national identity, consumerism, and infrastructure. For better or worse, windshields have become a…
- New Books in American Studies
Jacob Lee, "Masters of the Middle Waters: Indian Nations and Colonial Ambitions Along the Mississippi" (Harvard UP, 2019)
America’s waterways were once the superhighways of travel and communication. Coursing through a central line across the landscape, with tributaries connecting…
- New Books in American Studies
James Mallery, "City of Vice: Transience and San Francisco's Urban History, 1848-1917" (U Nebraska Press, 2024)
San Francisco began its American life as a city largely made up of transient men, arriving from afar to participate in the gold rush and various attendant…
- New Books in American Studies
Melissa E. Anderson, "Inland Empire" (Fireflies Press, 2021)
"A woman in trouble" In her monograph Inland Empire (Fireflies Press, 2021), film critic Melissa Anderson explores meaning (or the impossibility thereof) in…
- New Books in American Studies
Michael Willrich, "American Anarchy: The Epic Struggle between Immigrant Radicals and the US Government at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century" (Basic Books, 2023)
In the early twentieth century, anarchists like Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman championed a radical vision of a world without states, laws, or private…
- New Books in American Studies
Charly Palmer and Karida Brown, "The New Brownies' Book: A Love Letter to Black Families" (Chronicle Books, 2023)
In 1920, W. E. B. Du Bois and the NAACP founders published The Brownies’ Book: A Monthly Magazine for Children of the Sun. A century later, The New Brownies'…
- New Books in American Studies
Emily J. Lordi, "The Meaning of Soul: Black Music and Resilience Since the 1960s" (Duke UP, 2020)
Soul is one of those concepts that is often evoked, but rarely satisfactorily defined. In The Meaning of Soul: Black Music and Resilience Since the 1960s (Duke…
- New Books in American Studies
Jill A. Fisher, "Adverse Events: Race, Inequality, and the Testing of New Pharmaceuticals" (NYU Press, 2020)
Imagine that you volunteer for the clinical trial of an experimental drug. The only direct benefit of participating is that you will receive up to $5,175. You…
- New Books in American Studies
Kevin Leo Nadal, "Queering Law and Order: LGBTQ Communities and the Criminal Justice System" (Lexington Book, 2020)
Throughout US history, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people have been pathologized, victimized, and criminalized. Reports of lynching…