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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6326
Liam Burke, “The Comic Book Film Adaptation: Ex...
When Marvel’s X-Men took the movie theaters by storm in the summer of 2000, the studios were both surprised and unprepared for the popularity of a comic book film. Over the last fifteen years, filmmakers have developed new ways to use modern movie tech...
69 min
6327
Amanda Lucia, “Reflections of Amma: Devotees in...
Waiting several hours in line for a hug is well worth it for thousands of people, the devotees of the Guru, Amma, Mata Amritanandamayi. In Reflections of Amma: Devotees in a Global Embrace (University of California Press, 2014), Amanda Lucia,
56 min
6328
Sonja D. Williams “Word Warrior: Richard Durham...
Sonja D. Williams‘ book Word Warrior: Richard Durham, Radio, and Freedom (University of Illinois Press, 2015) connects its subject to some of the most important events and social movements of his time, including what we now call the Civil Rights Moveme...
70 min
6329
Roberto Lint Sagarena, “Aztlan and Arcadia: Rel...
The (re)making of place has composed an essential aspect of Southern California history from the era of Spanish colonialism to the present. In Aztlan and Arcadia: Religion, Ethnicity, and the Creation of Place (NYU Press,
61 min
6330
Leonard Cassuto, “The Graduate School Mess: Wha...
The discontented graduate student is something of a cultural fixture in the U.S. Indeed theirs is a sorry lot. They work very hard, earn very little, and have very poor prospects. Nearly all of them want to become professors, but most of them won’t.
45 min
6331
Ronald P. Formisano, “Plutocracy in America” (J...
Ronald P. Formisano has written Plutocracy in America: How Increasing Inequality Destroys the Middle Class and Exploits the Poor (Johns Hopkins UP, 2015). Formisano is the William T. Bryan Chair of American History and professor emeritus of history at ...
15 min
6332
Ryan Craig, "College Disrupted: The Great Unbun...
An interview with Ryan Craig
41 min
6333
Suzanna Reiss, “We Sell Drugs: The Alchemy of U...
Though the conventional history of the U.S.-led “War on Drugs” locates the origins of this conflict in a reaction to the domestic culture of excess of the 1960s, a new book argues that international drug control efforts are actually decades older,
41 min
6334
Martha Joynt Kumar, “Before the Oath: How Georg...
Martha Joynt Kumar has recently published, Before the Oath: How George W. Bush and Barack Obama Managed a Transfer of Power (Johns Hopkins UP, 2015). She is professor of political science at Towson University.
21 min
6335
John McMillian, “Beatles vs. Stones” (Simon and...
John McMillian‘s Beatles vs. Stones (Simon and Schuster, 2013) presents a compelling composite biography of the two seminal bands of the 1960s, examining both the myth-making and reality behind the great pop rivalry.
65 min
6336
Deborah R. Vargas, “Dissonant Divas in Chicana ...
In her transformative text Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, Gloria Anzaldua referred to the U.S.-Mexico border region as “una herida abierta (an open wound) where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds.
73 min
6337
Terrance J. Finnegan, “A Delicate Affair on the...
In his second book, author Terrance J. Finnegan describes America’s early experience fighting the Germans during World War I. Finnegan’s A Delicate Affair on the Western Front: America Learns How to Fight a Modern War in the Woevre Trenches (The Histor...
59 min
6338
Phil Tiermeyer, “Plane Queer: Labor, Sexuality,...
Today’s guest discusses the history of sexuality in the workplace through the lens of male flight attendants. We speak with Phil Tiemeyer about the shifts and changes in the airline industry across the 20th century.
38 min
6339
Patty Farmer, “Playboy Swings! How Hugh Hefner ...
What do Aretha Franklin, Rodney Dangerfield, and desegregation in New Orleans have in common? Perhaps, surprisingly, the answer is Playboy. Playboy magazine served as a guidebook for young people in the post-war era and taught this upwardly mobile gene...
33 min
6340
Eric Nadelstern, “Ten Lessons from New York Cit...
With 40 years of public school experience, from teacher to high-ranking official of one of the largest school systems in the US, Eric Nadelstern has a deep perspective and nuanced understanding of the current educational landscape.
32 min
6341
Elizabeth Haas, Terry Chrstensen, and Peter J. ...
Politics has been a part of many films, since the beginning of the industry over 100 years ago. These include movies with political subjects, such as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, to films with political underpinnings, such as The Hurt Locker.
62 min
6342
Justin S. Vaughn and Jose D. Villalobos, “Czars...
Justin S. Vaughn and Jose D. Villalobos have written Czars in the White House: The Rise of Policy Czars as Presidential Management Tools (University of Michigan Press, 2015). Vaughn is Associate Professor of Political Science at Boise State University;...
33 min
6343
George H. Nash, ed., “The Crusade Years, 1933-1...
George H. Nash is an independent scholar, historian, and lecturer. As a scholar of American conservative thought and biographer of Herbert Hoover, Nash edited The Crusade Years, 1933-1955: Herbert Hoover’s Lost Memoir of the New Deal Era and its Afterm...
61 min
6344
Natalia Molina, “How Race is Made in America: I...
“America is a nation of immigrants.” Either this common refrain, or its cousin the “melting pot” metaphor is repeated daily in conversations at various levels of U.S. society. Be it in the private or public realm,
67 min
6345
Thomas Holyoke, “The Ethical Lobbyist: Reformin...
Thomas Holyoke is the author of The Ethical Lobbyist: Reforming Washington’s Influence Industry (Georgetown UP, 2015). Holyoke is associate professor of political science at California State University, Fresno.
27 min
6346
Gordon H. Chang, “Fateful Ties: A History of Am...
“There was China before there was an America, and it is because of China that America came to be.” According to Gordon H. Chang‘s new book, the idea of “China” became “an ingredient within the developing identity of America itself.
69 min
6347
Ignacio M. Garcia, “Chicano While Mormon: Activ...
Identities are complicated things. Often contradictory and rarely easily understood, identities emerge early in ones life and are shaped continually through daily social relations as we seek to make sense of the world and our place in it. To some,
66 min
6348
Douglas B. Bamforth et al., “The Allen Site: A ...
In this episode of New Books in Archaeology we talk with Douglas B. Bamforth about his new book The Allen Site: A Paleoindian Camp in Southwestern Nebraska (University of New Mexico Press, 2015). Bamforth focuses primarily on Paleoindian land use repre...
79 min
6349
Laura Isabel Serna, “Making Cinelandia: America...
During the early decades of the 20thcentury the nation of Mexico entered the modern era through a series of social, political, and economic transformations spurred by the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920. At the same time,
74 min
6350
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, “An Indigenous Peoples’ H...
When Howard Zinn published A People’s History of the United States in 1980, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz was thrilled. “I used it as a text immediately,” she remembers. Comrades in the movement anti-war movement, Zinn and Dunbar-Ortiz shared a belief that a ra...
71 min