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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
Kristin J. Jacobson, "The American Adrenaline Narrative" (U Georgia Press, 2020)
Kristin J. Jacobson In her new book, The American Adrenaline Narrative (University of Georgia Press), Kristin Jacobson considers the nature of perilous outdoor…
- New Books in American Studies
Mark Peterson, "The City-State of Boston: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Power" (Princeton UP, 2019)
In the vaunted annals of America’s founding, Boston has long been held up as an exemplary “city upon a hill” and the “cradle of liberty” for an independent…
- New Books in American Studies
Mónica A. Jiménez, "Making Never-Never Land: Race and Law in the Creation of Puerto Rico" (UNC Press, 2024)
Myths about the powers held by the United States are often supported by the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, which derives its logic from the interpretation…
- New Books in American Studies
Heidi Honeycutt, "I Spit on Your Celluloid: The History of Women Directing Horror Movies" (Headpress, 2024)
I Spit On Your Celluloid: The History of Women Directing Horror Movies (Headpress, 2024) by Heidi Honeycutt is the first book-length history of female horror…
- New Books in American Studies
Tea Krulos, "American Madness: The Story of the Phantom Patriot and How Conspiracy Theories Hijacked American Consciousness" (Feral House, 2020)
The mainstream news media struggles to understand the power of social media. In contrast, conspiracy advocates, malicious political movements, and even foreign…
- New Books in American Studies
Walaa Quisay, "Neo-Traditionalism in Islam in the West" (Edinburgh UP, 2023)
In this very exciting book that I couldn’t put down - Neo-Traditionalism in Islam in the West: Orthodoxy, Spirituality, and Politics (Edinburgh University…
- New Books in American Studies
Maya Pagni Barak, "The Slow Violence of Immigration Court: Procedural Justice on Trial" (NYU Press, 2023)
Each year, hundreds of thousands of migrants are moved through immigration court. With a national backlog surpassing one million cases, court hearings take…
- New Books in American Studies
Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism—and What Comes Next
Watching the footage of the January 6 insurrection, Professor Bradley Onishi wondered: If I hadn't left evangelicalism, would I have been there? Today’s book…
- New Books in American Studies
Theresa McCulla, "Insatiable City: Food and Race in New Orleans" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
A history of food in the Crescent City that explores race, power, social status, and labor. In Insatiable City: Food and Race in New Orleans (U Chicago Press…
- New Books in American Studies
Kellie Carter Jackson, "We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance" (Seal Press, 2024)
Black resistance to white supremacy is often reduced to a simple binary, between Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolence and Malcolm X’s “by any means…
- New Books in American Studies
William Gow, "Performing Chinatown: Hollywood, Tourism, and the Making of a Chinese American Community" (Stanford UP, 2024)
This episode features a conversation with Dr. William Gow on his recently published book, Performing Chinatown: Hollywood, Tourism, and the Making of a Chinese…
- New Books in American Studies
David Alff, "The Northeast Corridor: The Trains, the People, the History, the Region" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
Traversed by thousands of trains and millions of riders, the Northeast Corridor might be America’s most famous railway, but its influence goes far beyond the…
- New Books in American Studies
Neil J. Young, "Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right (U Chicago Press, 2024) is a fascinating and engaging historical tour of those who were gay and active in…
- New Books in American Studies
Premal Dharia et al., "Dismantling Mass Incarceration: A Handbook for Change" (FSG Originals, 2024)
In recent years, a searching national conversation has called attention to the social and racial injustices that define America’s criminal system. The…
- New Books in American Studies
Natasha L. Mikles, "Shattered Grief: How the Pandemic Transformed the Spirituality of Death in America" (Columbia UP, 2024)
The COVID-19 pandemic left millions grieving their loved ones without the consolation of traditional ways of mourning. Patients were admitted to hospitals and…
- New Books in American Studies
Jake Johnson, "The Possibility Machine: Music and Myth in Las Vegas" (U Illinois Press, 2023)
Las Vegas is a place the American dream made; a city built in the middle of desert visited by millions of people every year hoping to make their dreams (big or…
- New Books in American Studies
Jonathan Tran, "Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism" (Oxford UP, 2021)
Any serious consideration of Asian American life forces us to reframe the way we talk about racism and antiracism. There are two contemporary approaches to…
- New Books in American Studies
Kathryn Hughes, "Catland: Louis Wain and the Great Cat Mania" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024)
In 1900, Britain and America were in the grip of a cat craze. An animal that had for centuries been seen as a household servant or urban nuisance had now…
- New Books in American Studies
The (ir)Rational Rainbow (the DSM & the Fight to Depathologize Homosexuality)
The psychological establishment has long pathologized diverse forms of sexual identity and gender expression. In the mid-century, a brave movement of gays and…
- New Books in American Studies
Timothy Grieve-Carlson, "American Aurora: Environment and Apocalypse in the Life of Johannes Kelpius" (Oxford UP, 2024)
American Aurora: Environment and Apocalypse in the Life of Johannes Kelpius (Oxford UP, 2024) explores the impact of climate change on early modern radical…
- New Books in American Studies
Amanda McMillan Lequieu, "Who We Are Is Where We Are: Making Home in the American Rust Belt" (Columbia UP, 2024)
Half a century ago, deindustrialization gutted blue-collar jobs in the American Midwest. But today, these places are not ghost towns. People still call these…
- New Books in American Studies
Marsha Gordon, "Becoming the Ex-Wife: The Unconventional Life and Forgotten Writings of Ursula Parrott" (U California Press, 2024)
Credited with popularizing the label "ex-wife" in 1929, Ursula Parrott wrote provocatively about divorcées, career women, single mothers, work-life balance…
- New Books in American Studies
Racism as Power Relation: A Discussion with Adaner Usmani (EF, JP)
Do we understand racism as the primary driving engine of American inequality? Or do we focus instead on the indirect ways that frequently hard-to-discern class…
- New Books in American Studies
Sigrid Schönfelder, "'Gold Fever' and Women: Transformations in Lives, Health Care and Medicine in the 19th Century American West" (Transcript, 2023)
Throughout its history, the American West symbolized a place of hope and new beginnings, where anything was possible, especially for men. However, the history…
- New Books in American Studies
Ben Wright, "Bonds of Salvation: How Christianity Inspired and Limited American Abolitionism" (LSU Press, 2020)
Ben Wright's Bonds of Salvation: How Christianity Inspired and Limited American Abolitionism (LSU Press, 2020) demonstrates how religion structured the…
- New Books in American Studies
Lance J. Sussman, "Portrait of an American Rabbi: In His Own Words" (Xlibris US, 2023)
Rabbi Lance J. Sussman, Ph.D., has been a leading rabbi and scholar of the American Jewish experience throughout his long career. Now Rabbi Emeritus of Reform…
- New Books in American Studies
Meaghan Stiman, "Privileging Place: How Second Homeowners Transform Communities and Themselves" (Princeton UP, 2024)
In recent decades, Americans have purchased second homes at unprecedented rates. In Privileging Place: How Second Homeowners Transform Communities and…
- New Books in American Studies
Postscript: Does the June POTUS Debate Matter?
On Thursday, June 27th, President Joe Biden and Trump debated for 90 minutes without a live audience or the usually provided by the Commission on Presidential…
- New Books in American Studies
Bayley J. Marquez, "Plantation Pedagogy: The Violence of Schooling Across Black and Indigenous Space" (U California Press, 2024)
Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, teachers, administrators, and policymakers fashioned a system of industrial education that attempted to…
- New Books in American Studies
Felicia Arriaga, "Behind Crimmigration: ICE, Law Enforcement, and Resistance in America" (UNC Press, 2023)
In recent years, dozens of counties in North Carolina have partnered with federal law enforcement in the criminalization of immigration--what many have dubbed…
- New Books in American Studies
Rachel Williams, "Tabernacles in the Wilderness: The US Christian Commission on the Civil War Battlefront" (Kent State UP, 2024)
Examining how a civilian organization used the Civil War to advance their religious mission. Tabernacles in the Wilderness: The US Christian Commission on the…
- New Books in American Studies
Nancy Woloch, "Women and the American Experience: A Concise History" (Routledge, 2024)
The third edition of Women and the American Experience: A Concise History (Routledge, 2024) is a comprehensive survey of U.S. women’s history from the…
- New Books in American Studies
Jessica Lander, "Making Americans: Stories of Historic Struggles, New Ideas, and Inspiration in Immigrant Education" (Beacon Press, 2022)
A landmark work that weaves captivating stories about the past, present, and personal into an inspiring vision for how America can educate immigrant students…
- New Books in American Studies
Barbara Klinger, "Immortal Films: 'Casablanca' and the Afterlife of a Hollywood Classic" (U California Press, 2022)
Casablanca is one of the most celebrated Hollywood films of all time, its iconic romance enshrined in collective memory across generations. Drawing from…
- New Books in American Studies
Jennifer C. Berkshire and Jack Schneider, "The Education Wars: A Citizen’s Guide and Defense Manual" (The New Press, 2024)
A perfectly timed book for the educational resistance—those of us who believe in public schools Culture wars have engulfed our schools. Extremist groups are…
- New Books in American Studies
Jeremy Schipper, "Denmark Vesey's Bible: The Thwarted Revolt That Put Slavery and Scripture on Trial" (Princeton UP, 2022)
In Denmark Vesey's Bible: The Thwarted Revolt that Put Slavery and Scripture on Trial (Princeton UP, 2022), Dr. Jeremy Schipper tells the story of a free Black…
New Books in American StudiesAmerican Muslim Women on Campus
A conversation with award-winning academic Dr. Shabana Mir discussing her book Muslim American Women on Campus: Undergraduate Social Life and Identity (UNC…
- New Books in American Studies
Frederick Klaits et al., "Pentecostal Insight in a Segregated US City: Designs for Vitality" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
In Pentecostal Insight in a Segregated US City: Designs for Vitality (Bloomsbury, 2022), Frederick Klaits compares how members of one majority white and two…
- New Books in American Studies
Donald Stoker, "Purpose and Power: US Grand Strategy from the Revolutionary Era to the Present" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
In our interview, I spoke with Donald Stoker about the changes in American grand strategy over the past 250 years and the major themes from his new book…
- New Books in American Studies
Emily Zackin and Chloe N. Thurston, "The Political Development of American Debt Relief" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
A political history of the rise and fall of American debt relief. Americans have a long history with debt. They also have a long history of mobilizing for debt…
- New Books in American Studies
Jerry Rafiki Jenkins, "Anti-Blackness and Human Monstrosity in Black American Horror Fiction" (Ohio State UP, 2024)
In Anti-Blackness and Human Monstrosity in Black American Horror Fiction (Ohio State UP, 2024), Jerry Rafiki Jenkins examines four types of human monsters that…
- New Books in American Studies
Ricardo Quintana-Vallejo, "Growing Up in the Gutter: Diaspora and Comics" (U Arizona Press, 2024)
Growing Up in the Gutter: Diaspora and Comics (U Arizona Press, 2024) by Dr. Ricardo Quintana-Vallejo offers new understandings of contemporary graphic…
- New Books in American Studies
A Psychoanalytic Overview of Racism in America
The first podcast in this series was inspired by a documentary film made in 2014 called “Black Analysts Speak” as well as some of the findings in the Holmes…
- New Books in American Studies
Ann Powers, "Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell" (Dey Street Books, 2024)
For decades, Joni Mitchell's life and music have enraptured listeners. One of the most celebrated artists of her generation, Mitchell has inspired countless…
- New Books in American Studies
Postscript: Unpacking the 2024 U.S. Presidential Debate, Conventions, and Polling
The first presidential debate will be held on June 27th, 2024 and the Republicans are heading to Milwaukee (a city Donald Trump recently called “horrible” and…
- New Books in American Studies
Trish Kahle on the Labor History of Energy Systems
Peoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks to Trish Kahle, Assistant Professor of History at Georgetown University-Qatar, about Kahle's new project, "Power Up: A…
- New Books in American Studies
Elsa Devienne, "Sand Rush: The Revival of the Beach in Twentieth-Century Los Angeles" (Oxford UP, 2024)
The Los Angeles shoreline is one of the most iconic natural landscapes in the United States, if not the world. The vast shores of Santa Monica, Venice, and…
- New Books in American Studies
Hank Willenbrink, "Performing for the Don: Theatres of Faith in the Age of Trump" (Routledge, 2024)
From his overwhelming embrace by evangelicals and other people of faith to his championing of policies and conservative judicial candidates long sought by…
- New Books in American Studies
Allison Elias, "The Rise of Corporate Feminism: Women in the American Office, 1960-1990" (Columbia UP, 2022)
From the 1960s through the 1990s, the most common job for women in the United States was clerical work. Even as college-educated women obtained greater…
- New Books in American Studies
Paula Marie Seniors, "Mae Mallory, the Monroe Defense Committee, and World Revolutions: African American Women Radical Activists" (U Georgia Press, 2024)
Mae Mallory, the Monroe Defense Committee, and World Revolutions: African American Women Radical Activists (U Georgia Press, 2024) explores the significant…
- New Books in American Studies
Jennifer S. Clark, "Producing Feminism: Television Work in the Age of Women's Liberation" (U California Press, 2024)
How have women resisted sexism in TV? In Producing Feminism: Television Work in the Age of Women’s Liberation (U California Press, 2024), Jennifer S. Clark, an…
- New Books in American Studies
M. Girard Dorsey, "Holding Their Breath: How the Allies Confronted the Threat of Chemical Warfare in World War II" (Cornell UP, 2023)
In Holding Their Breath: How the Allies Confronted the Threat of Chemical Warfare in World War II (Cornell UP, 2023), M. Girard Dorsey uncovers just how close…
- New Books in American Studies
Kathleen DuVal, "Native Nations: A Millennium in North America" (Random House, 2024)
In this sweeping new history, esteemed University of North Carolina historian Kathleen DuVal makes the case for the ongoing, ancient, and dynamic history of…
- New Books in American Studies
Postscript: The Supreme Court’s Decisions on Bump Stocks and Mifepristone
In this episode of our occasional series, Postscript, we focus on the Supreme Court’s recently published decisions in two cases, about guns and abortion, but…
- New Books in American Studies
Aziz Rana, "The Constitutional Bind: How Americans Came to Idolize a Document That Fails Them" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
In a pathbreaking retelling of the American experience, Aziz Rana shows that today’s reverential constitutional culture is a distinctively twentieth-century…
- New Books in American Studies
Sally Stocksdale, "When Emancipation Came: The End of Enslavement on a Southern Plantation and a Russian Estate" (McFarland, 2022)
Linked by declarations of emancipation within the same five-year period, two countries shared human rights issues on two distinct continents. In When…
- New Books in American Studies
Alex V. Barnard, "Conservatorship: Inside California's System of Coercion and Care for Mental Illness" (Columbia UP, 2023)
Is involuntary psychiatric treatment the solution to the intertwined crises of untreated mental illness, homelessness, and addiction? In recent years…
- New Books in American Studies
Jared McDonald, "Feeling Their Pain: Why Voters Want Leaders who Care" (Oxford UP, 2023)
The 2020 Presidential Election in the United States marked, for many, a return to "compassionate politics." Joe Biden had run on a platform of empathy…
- New Books in American Studies
Postscript: Previewing the 2024 Presidential Race
States are holding primaries. The Democrats and Republicans will convene in July and August but it has already been decided that the presidential race will be…
- New Books in American Studies
Timothy G. Anderson and Brian Schoen, "Settling Ohio: First Peoples and Beyond" (Ohio UP, 2023)
Scholars working in archaeology, education, history, geography, and politics tell a nuanced story about the people and dynamics that reshaped this region and…