New Books in American Studies

Interviews with Scholars of America about their New Books

Society & Culture
History
5826
Ulla Berg, “Mobile Selves: Race, Migration, and...
Ulla Berg’s new book Mobile Selves: Race, Migration, and Belonging in Peru and the U.S. (New York University Press, 2015) highlights the deeply historical and central role of migration as a strategy for social mobility,
71 min
5827
Aisha Durham, “Home With Hip Hop Feminism” (Pet...
Is hip hop defined by its artists or by its audience? In Home With Hip Hop Feminism, Aisha Durham returns hip hop scholarship to its roots by engaging in an ethnographic and autoethnographic approach to studying hip hop.
40 min
5828
Patrick Bowen, “A History of Conversion to Isla...
In the current political moment there is widespread anti-Muslim rhetoric and it would be easy to conclude that a large portion of white Americans see Islam at odds with American values. But a longer view of history reveals a long-standing appreciation ...
63 min
5829
Luke Nichter and Douglas Brinkley, “The Nixon T...
Luke Nichter and Douglas Brinkley are the editors of The Nixon Tapes: 1973 (Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt 2015). Nichter is associate professor of history at Texas A&M University and Brinkley is professor of history at Rice University.
16 min
5830
Howard Brick and Christopher Phelps, “Radicals ...
Christopher Phelps is an associate professor at the University of Nottingham and co-author of Radicals in America: The U.S. Left since the Second World War (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Phelps and Howard Brick have written a comprehensive history...
62 min
5831
Sean McCloud, “American Possessions: Fighting D...
Exorcisms and demons. In his new book American Possessions: Fighting Demons in the Contemporary United States (Oxford University Press, 2015), Sean McCloud argues that not only have such phenomena been on the rise in the last 30 or so years,
46 min
5832
Eric Foner, “Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden His...
In this podcast I talk with Eric Foner, DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University about his book, Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad (W. W. Norton & Company, 2015). Per the book jacket,
46 min
5833
Anthony Maniscalco, “Public Spaces, Marketplace...
Anthony Maniscalco is the author of Public Spaces, Marketplaces, and the Constitution: Shopping Malls and the First Amendment (SUNY Press, 2015). Maniscalco is the director of the Edward T. Rogowsky Internship Program in Government and Public Affairs a...
22 min
5834
Sujey Vega, “Latino Heartland: Of Borders and B...
In Latino Heartland: Of Borders and Belonging in the Midwest (New York University Press, 2015), Sujey Vega Assistant Professor of Women and Gender Studies at Arizona State University, traces the way Latina/o Hoosiers established community and belonging...
69 min
5835
Heath W. Carter, “Union Made: Working People an...
Heath W. Carter‘s new book Union Made: Working People and the Rise of Social Christianity in Chicago (Oxford University Press, 2015) offers a bold interpretation of the origins of the American Social Gospel by highlighting the role of labor in both art...
62 min
5836
John M. Kinder, “Paying with Their Bodies: Amer...
76 min
5837
Daniel Tortora, "Carolina in Crisis: Cherokees,...
An interview with Daniel Tortora
56 min
5838
Michael Kimmel, “Angry White Men: American Masc...
Michael Kimmel is the Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies at Stony Brook University. He is also executive director of the Center for the Study of Men and Masculinities. His book Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an...
44 min
5839
Julie M. Weise, “Corazon de Dixie: Mexicanos in...
Julie M. Weise‘s new book Corazon de Dixie: Mexicanos in the U.S. South Since 1910 (UNC Press, 2015) is the first book to comprehensively document Mexicans’ and Mexican Americans’ long history of migration to the U.S. South.
64 min
5840
Ted Merwin, “Pastrami on Rye: An Overstuffed Hi...
In Pastrami on Rye: An Overstuffed History of the Jewish Deli (New York University Press, 2015), Ted Merwin, Associate Professor of Religion and Judaic Studies at Dickinson College, serves up the first full-length history of the New York Jewish deli.
29 min
5841
Jodi Eichler-Levine, “Suffer the Little Childre...
In Suffer the Little Children: Uses of the Past in Jewish and African American Children’s Literature (New York University Press, 2013), Jodi Eichler-Levine, associate professor of Religion Studies and Berman Professor of Jewish Civilization at Lehigh U...
27 min
5842
Christine Hong, “Identity, Youth, and Gender in...
In her new book, Identity, Youth, and Gender in the Korean American Church (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), Dr. Christine Hong explores the lives of female Korean American Mainline Christian adolescents. Hong’s work,
47 min
5843
Phil Ford, “Dig: Sound and Music in Hip Cultur...
What is hip? Can a piece of music be hip? Or is hipness primarily a way of engaging with music which recognizes the hip potential of the music? Or primarily a manner of being, which allows the hip individual to authentically engage with the hip artwork...
45 min
5844
Jennifer Mittelstadt, “The Rise of the Military...
Have you seen those Facebook memes floating around, arguing that we shouldn’t support a 15-dollar -per-hour minimum wage for service sector workers because the military doesn’t earn a living wage? Jennifer Mittelstadt tells us how these stark lines wer...
49 min
5845
Mark A. Noll, “In the Beginning was the Word: T...
Mark A. Noll is the Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame. His book, In the Beginning was the Word: The Bible in American Public Life, 1492-1783 (Oxford University Press, 2015),
61 min
5846
Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett, “Carolina Israelite:...
In Carolina Israelite: How Harry Golden Made Us Care about Jews, the South, and Civil Rights (The University of North Carolina Press, 2015), Kimberly Marlowe Hartnett, a writer and former journalist, introduces us to the larger-than-life personality Ha...
29 min
5847
Mark A. Smith, “Secular Faith: How Culture Has ...
Mark A. Smith is the author of Secular Faith: Culture Has Trumped Religion in American Politics (University of Chicago Press, 2015). Smith is professor of political science at the University of Washington. The provocative central thesis of this book is...
18 min
5848
Leah Garrett, “Young Lions: How Jewish Authors ...
Finalist, 2015 National Jewish Book Award In her new book Young Lions: How Jewish Authors Reinvented the American War Novel (Northwestern University Press, 2015), Leah Garrett, the Loti Smorgon (Professor of Contemporary Jewish Life and Culture at Mona...
62 min
5849
Kimberly Fain, “Colson Whitehead: The Postracia...
Colson Whitehead’s fiction has drawn varied criticism. On the one hand, there’s the scholarship of the African diaspora, a tradition that takes the long view of Whitehead–extrapolating him from their existing canon (of Du Bois, Hurston, Ellison, etc.
52 min
5850
Raymond La Raja and Brian Schaffner, “Campaign ...
For much of the last 50 years, there has been a consensus that restrictions on political money would improve politics and government. Federal and state campaign finance reforms aimed to do just that. In their recent book Campaign Finance and Political ...
18 min