New Books in American Studies

Interviews with Scholars of America about their New Books

Society & Culture
History
4976
Joshua Reid, "The Sea is My Country: The Mariti...
In 1999, the Makahs went out on the Pacific for their first whale hunt in over seventy years. The event drew protests from animal rights activists and local (mostly white) Washingtonians...
48 min
4977
Tison Pugh, "The Queer Fantasies of the America...
Perhaps no form of popular art has appeared as poised to resist subversive sexual themes as the television situation comedy...
53 min
4978
Hannah Holleman, "Dust Bowls of Empire: Imperia...
None of the climate news that we’re getting is good right now, especially now that a number of governments are reversing or failing to meet commitments they made as part of the Paris Climate Accord...
56 min
4979
R. David Cox, "The Religious Life of Robert E. ...
Professor Cox’s book presents his perennially controversial subject was a consistently religious thinker, working from the deist and evangelical influences of Lee’s parents towards the religious convictions and commitments of his maturity...
40 min
4980
Patrick B. Mullen, "Right to the Juke Joint: A ...
On its back cover, Patrick B. Mullen’s Right to the Juke Joint: A Personal History of American Music (University of Illinois Press, 2018) is aptly described as “part scholar's musings and part fan's memoir."
50 min
4981
Brenden W. Rensink, "Native but Foreign: Indige...
Brenden Rensink asks the question "How do national borders affect and react to Native identity?"
56 min
4982
Melanie V. Dawson and Meredith L. Goldsmith, "A...
As scholars and readers, we often view literary history in rigid, simplistic terms. We imagine that nineteenth-century aesthetic and thematic preoccupations withered away as 1899 became 1900, only to be replaced immediately by a new literature of the twentieth century...
50 min
4983
Jessica Trounstine, "Segregation by Design: Loc...
Segregation by Design draws on a century of data from thousands of American cities to explore how local governments design policies that create race and class segregation...
22 min
4984
Peter Hitchens, "The Phoney Victory: The World ...
Was World War II really the 'Good War'? In the years since the declaration of peace in 1945 many myths have sprung up around the conflict in the victorious nations, especially the United Kingdom....
43 min
4985
Robert C. Trumpbour and Kenneth Womack, "The Ei...
t rose against the Texas sun in all its architectural audacity: a domed stadium big enough to cover a baseball field...
53 min
4986
Chad R. Diehl, "Resurrecting Nagasaki: Reconstr...
The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki both play a central role in any narrative of the end of the East Asia-Pacific War...
71 min
4987
Patricia O'Toole, "The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson...
Whether you love him or hate him, it is indisputable that few, if any, other 20th-century American presidents were as historically consequential as Woodrow Wilson...
36 min
4988
McKenzie Wark, "General Intellects: Twenty-One ...
McKenzie Wark’s new book offers 21 focused studies of thinkers working in a wide range of fields who are worth your attention...
61 min
4989
Sara Komarnisky, "Mexicans in Alaska: An Ethnog...
“There are Mexicans in Alaska?” This was the response Sara Komarnisky heard repeatedly when describing her research on three generations of transnational migrants....
55 min
4990
Kevin Hamilton and Ned O’Gorman, "Lookout Ameri...
One of the major aspects of the end of the Cold War has been the discovery and release of records related to many government activities from the period...
58 min
4991
Adam Malka, "The Men of Mobtown: Policing Balti...
Criminal justice, policing, and mass incarceration have gained significant political attention recently, and the problems of these systems have drawn increasingly frequent calls for reform from the right and left....
59 min
4992
Aram Goudsouzian and Charles McKinney, "An Unse...
Most people will know that Memphis, Tennessee is where Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968...
44 min
4993
Laszlo Borhi, "Dealing with Dictators: The Unit...
How does a political regime function? What contributes to a regime’s longevity and subversion?
34 min
4994
John Sides, Michael Tesler, Lynn Vavreck, "Iden...
In Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America (Princeton University Press, 2018), co-authors John Sides, Michael Tesler, and Lynn Vavreck explore the underlying question of American identity as a key component within the political landscape that was used during the 2016 primary and general election...
42 min
4995
John C. Hajduk, "Music Wars: Money, Politics, a...
In his new book Music Wars: Money, Politics, and Race in the Construction of Rock and Roll Culture, 1940–1960 (Lexington Books, 2018)...
60 min
4996
Alec Nevala-Lee, "Astounding" (Dey Street Books...
41 min
4997
Sharon Block, “Colonial Complexions: Race and B...
Today we have a certain idea of “race”; it’s socially constructed, conventional, and not really biological-grounded in any sense.  Yet we commonly use the idea of “race” in our everyday lives to identify ourselves and others.
58 min
4998
Sara Egge, “Woman Suffrage and Citizenship in t...
While the campaign to win for women the right to vote in America was waged on a national scale, this often obscures the fact that the most of battles took place at the state level, where local perspectives were key.
52 min
4999
Kathleen Hull and John Douglass, “Forging Commu...
Between 1769 and 1834, an influx of Spanish, Russian, and then American colonists streamed into Alta California seeking new opportunities. Their arrival brought the imposition of foreign beliefs, practices, and constraints on Indigenous peoples.
75 min
5000
David Charles Sloane, “Is the Cemetery Dead?” (...
It is certain that we all will experience death in our life. What is less certain is how and where our bodies will be disposed of. In Is the Cemetery Dead? (University of Chicago Press, 2018), Dr. David Charles Sloane discussed how cemeteries have tran...
41 min