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.
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5676
David W. Grua, “Surviving Wounded Knee: The Lak...
It’s a sad story known well. In dead of winter at Wounded Knee Creek in 1890, U.S. soldiers with the Seventh Cavalry Regiment gunned down over two hundred Lakota men, women, and children. Their crime? Taking part in the Ghost Dance ritual.
35 min
5677
Sam Rosenfeld, “The Polarizers: Postwar Archite...
In our hyper polarized world, it is easy to assume that this is a natural state of being, the result of natural shifts in politics. In Sam Rosenfeld‘s new book, The Polarizers: Postwar Architects of Our Partisan Era (University of Chicago Press,
22 min
5678
Deborah Vargas, et al., “Keywords for Latina/o ...
In Keywords for Latina/o Studies (NYU Press, 2017) editors Deborah Vargas, Nancy Raquel Mirabal, and Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes engage many of the fields top scholars in a critical and generative dialogue surrounding the primary concepts and themes th...
41 min
5679
Kevin Patrick, “The Phantom Unmasked: America’s...
In The Phantom Unmasked: America’s First Superhero (University of Iowa Press, 2017), Kevin Patrick examines the history of The Phantom—an American comic strip superhero that made his debut in 1936. Although not popular in the United States,
65 min
5680
Lisa King, “Legible Sovereignties: Rhetoric, Re...
In Legible Sovereignties: Rhetoric, Representations, and Native American Museums (Oregon State University Press, 2017), Lisa King explores the ways in which rhetoric is used to represent Indigenous sovereignty and explore difficult histories related to...
47 min
5681
Kathryn Troy, “The Specter of the Indian: Race,...
In a meticulously researched study The Specter of the Indian: Race, Gender and Ghosts in American Seances, 1848-1890 (SUNY Press, 2017), Kathryn Troy investigates the many examples of Indian ghosts appearing to Spiritualists in the latter half of the n...
48 min
5682
Sridhar Pappu, “The Year of the Pitcher: Bob Gi...
Today we are joined by Sridhar Pappu, author of the book The Year of the Pitcher: Bob Gibson, Denny McLain and the End of Baseball’s Golden Age (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017). Pappu is The Male Animal columnist for The New York Times,
57 min
5683
Kyle Longley, “LBJ’s 1968: Power, Politics, and...
It was a year that at times left Lyndon Johnson feeling as though he was living in a continuous nightmare. Yet as Kyle Longley describes in his book LBJ’s 1968: Power, Politics, and the Presidency in America’s Year of Upheaval (Cambridge University Pre...
47 min
5684
Joseph Nathan Cohen, “Financial Crisis in Ameri...
Are iPhones or homes bankrupting Americans? Joe Cohen‘s new book, Financial Crisis in American Households: The Basic Expenses That Bankrupt the Middle Class (Praeger, 2017), presents data and discussion on the financial status of American households.
44 min
5685
Becky Aikman, “Off the Cliff: How the Making of...
Thelma and Louise is rightly considered a great film that went through an incredible journey to the screen. It is also an illustration of how dedicated women still had to fight hard to get it made. Becky Aikman‘s book Off the Cliff: How the Making of T...
64 min
5686
Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, “Colored Travelers: M...
Typically the Jim Crow Era of segregation is understood as beginning directly after Reconstruction and going into the mid-twentieth century with the dual climaxes of the Brown vs. Board Supreme Court decision and the Montgomery Bus Boycott Movement in ...
58 min
5687
Zoe Wool, “After War: The Weight of Life at Wal...
Zoe Wool‘s ethnography of rehabilitation After War: The Weight of Life at Walter Reed (Duke University Press, 2015) describes how soldiers injured in the war on terror are pulled towards a normal and idealized American life (Duke University Press,
85 min
5688
Michael Patrick Cullinane, “Theodore Roosevelts...
That Theodore Roosevelt remains one of America’s most recognizable presidents nearly a century after his death is due in no small measure to the flamboyant image he presented. Yet as Michael Patrick Cullinane reveals in Theodore Roosevelt’s Ghost: The ...
46 min
5689
Zach Sands, “Film Comedy and the American Dream...
On this episode Diana DePasquale talks to Zach Sands, author of Film Comedy and the American Dream (Routledge, 2017). Some of the films Zach writes about are Harvey, The Graduate, Blazing Saddles, The Jerk, Trading Place, and Office Space.
29 min
5690
Richard E. Schroeder, “The Foundation of the CI...
The CIA is a well-known agency to say the least. It is a key part of the United States’ national security apparatus and has been for the past 70 years. The CIA’s reputation is mixed though. From 1970s scandals to intelligence failures to its inherent s...
55 min
5691
Robert Hunt Ferguson, “Remaking the Rural South...
In an unlikely place at an unlikely time, a group of black and white former sharecroppers, socialist organizers, and Christian reformers began an agricultural experiment in pursuit of economic subsistence and human dignity.
51 min
5692
Daniel J. Sharfstein, “Thunder in the Mountains...
Daniel J. Sharfstein, Professor of Law and History at Vanderbilt University, narrates a postbellum struggle that raged in the Northern Rockies in Thunder in the Mountains: Chief Joseph, Oliver Otis Howard, and the Nez Perce War (W.W.
73 min
5693
What Role Did World War I Play in Women Gaining...
In the fifth podcast of Arguing History, Lynn Dumenil and Christopher Capozzola consider the relationship between America’s involvement in World War I and the granting of women the right to vote. As they note,
56 min
5694
Chris Zepeda-Millan, “Latino Mass Mobilization:...
Prior to the wave of protests in 2017 supporting immigrants in the US, there were the protests of 2006. That spring, millions of Latinos and other immigrants across the country opposed Congressional action hostile to immigrants.
24 min
5695
Hendrik Meijer, “Arthur Vandenberg: The Man in ...
As a United States senator in the 1930s and 1940s, Arthur Vandenberg was one of the leading Republican voices shaping the nation’s foreign policy. Though initially a staunch isolationist, as Hendrik Meijer explains in Arthur Vandenberg: The Man in the ...
71 min
5696
Stephen G. Craft, “American Justice in Taiwan: ...
On May 23, 1957, US Army Sergeant Robert Reynolds was acquitted of murdering Chinese officer Liu Ziran in Taiwan. Reynolds did not deny shooting Liu but claimed self-defense and, like all members of US military assistance and advisory groups,
56 min
5697
Lisa Brooks, “Our Beloved Kin: A New History of...
Lisa Brooks, Associate Professor of English and American Studies at Amherst College, recovers a complex picture of war, captivity, and Native resistance in Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War (Yale University Press, 2018).
64 min
5698
Eddy Portnoy, “Bad Rabbi And Other Strange But ...
In Bad Rabbi And Other Strange But True Stories from the Yiddish Press (Stanford University Press, 2017), Eddy Portnoy, Academic Advisor and Exhibitions Curator at the YIVO Institute for Yiddish Research, delves into the archives of the Yiddish press t...
35 min
5699
Gregory Laski, “Untimely Democracy: The Politic...
Gregory Laski approaches the concept of democracy in his text, Untimely Democracy: The Politics of Progress after Slavery (Oxford University Press, 2018) from a variety of dimensions and perspectives, integrating the concept of temporality to considera...
48 min
5700
Brian McCammack, “Landscapes of Hope: Nature an...
What can we learn about African American life between the world wars if we center our attention on the parks and pleasuring grounds of the urban North? That is what historian Brian McCammack endeavors to find out in his new book,
62 min