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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6801
James Unnever and Shaun L. Gabbidon, “A Theory ...
Is comedian and cultural critic Bill Cosby right–that black youth suffer from a cultural pathology that leads them to commit more crimes than their white counterparts? Is the remedy to the high rate of offending by African American men the “shape up or...
90 min
6802
Allen Guttmann, “Sports and American Art from B...
When I was a kid, I used to pore over an illustrated history of American sports that I had received as a birthday gift. The oversized, hardcover book featured some of the iconic images of 20th-century sports: Lou Gehrig standing humbly at home plate on...
50 min
6803
Martha Minow, “In Brown’s Wake: Legacies of Ame...
What can judges do to change society? Fifty-seven years ago, the Supreme Court resolved to find out: the unanimous ruling they issued in Brown v. Board of Education threw the weight of the Constitution fully behind the aspiration of social equality amo...
46 min
6804
David McMahan, “The Making of Buddhist Modernis...
For many Asian and Western Buddhists today, Buddhism means meditation and an embrace of the world’s interdependence. But that’s not what it meant to Buddhists in the past; most of them never meditated and often saw interdependence (or dependent origina...
56 min
6805
Cathleen D. Cahill, “Federal Fathers and Mother...
Cathleen D. Cahill’s groundbreaking new work, Federal Fathers and Mothers: A Social History of the United States Indian Service, 1869-1933 (UNC Press, 2011), lives up to the title: it is a social history in the best sense of the term.
56 min
6806
Miriam Thaggert, “Images of Black Modernism: Ve...
Miriam Thaggert’s study Images of Black Modernism: Verbal and Visual Strategies of the Harlem Renaissance (University of Massachusetts Press, 2010), is an exceptional contribution to the discussion of both modernism and the the period of intense Africa...
54 min
6807
Daniel Black, “Perfect Peace” (St. Martin’s Pre...
If a mother raises her biologically male child as a daughter instead of a son, what would be the effects on the family, the community, the church? Indeed what would be the psychosocial, psychoemotional effects on the daughter once she discovers she’s a...
59 min
6808
Keith Pomakoy, "Helping Humanity: American Poli...
An interview with Keith Pomakoy
93 min
6809
Robert Thurston, “Lynching: American Mob Murder...
It takes a brave historian to take on the orthodoxy regarding the rise and fall of lynching in the United States. That orthodoxy holds that lynching in the South was a ‘system of social control’ in which whites used organized terror to oppress blacks.
63 min
6810
Houston A. Baker, “Betrayal: How Black Intellec...
In his new book Betrayal: How Black Intellectuals Have Abandoned the Ideals of the Civil Rights Era (Columbia University Press, 2008), Houston A. Baker makes the argument that many contemporary black public intellectuals,
86 min
6811
Robert J. Corber, “Cold War Femme: Lesbianism, ...
The study of non-heteronormative sexualities in the academy continues to be remarkably dynamic. Despite the usual attempts to harden the frame around this scholarship, it remains consistently exciting and surprising. Robert J.
42 min
6812
Frank Dobson, Jr., “Rendered Invisible: Stories...
Frank Dobson, Jr.‘s Rendered Invisible: Stories of Blacks and Whites, Love and Death (Plain View Press, 2010) is a single-authored collection of fiction. It includes the opening, gripping novella “Rendered Invisible,” which gives the book its title.
60 min
6813
Dov Zakheim, “A Vulcan’s Tale: How the Bush Adm...
In his new book, A Vulcan’s Tale: How the Bush Administration Mismanaged the Reconstruction of Afghanistan (Brookings Institution Press, 2011) Dov Zakheim, former chief financial officer for the U.S. Department of Defense,
44 min
6814
Deborah Whaley, “Disciplining Women: Alpha Kapp...
Deborah Whaley’s new book Disciplining Women: Alpha Kappa Alpha, Black Counterpublics, and the Cultural Politics of Black Sororities (SUNY Press, 2010) may be the first full-length study of a Black Greek-Letter Organization (BGLO) written by a non-BGLO...
54 min
6815
Malinda Lowery, “Lumbee Indians in the Jim Crow...
When an Atlantic Coastline Railroad train pulled into Red Springs, North Carolina, the conductor faced a difficult dilemma. Whom to allow in coach class with whites and whom to relegate to the back? In an effort to clarify the matter,
61 min
6816
Dov Zakheim, "A Vulcan's Tale: How the Bush Adm...
An interview with Dov Zakheim
44 min
6817
Aziz Rana, “The Two Faces of American Freedom” ...
America, wrote the late historian and public intellectual Tony Judt, is “intensely familiar–and completely unknown.” America’s current position as the globe’s single superpower means that almost everyone, from a farmer harvesting his crops in Missouri ...
75 min
6818
Lee Congdon, “Baseball and Memory: Winning, Los...
“Isn’t it funny?” once mused Buck O’Neil, the sage of Negro League baseball. “Everybody remembers going to their first baseball game with their father. They might not remember going to their first day of school, . . .
54 min
6819
Don Van Natta, Jr., “Wonder Girl: The Magnifice...
My older daughter is twelve years old. Like many girls her age, she has spent countless hours on the soccer field. She has played volleyball and run cross-country at her school. She was the catcher for her Little League baseball team.
55 min
6820
Jace Weaver, “Notes from a Miner’s Canary: Essa...
Essay collections are often a repository of an author’s lesser works, an attempt by publishers to milk every last penny from a well-regarded scholar. This is not the case with Jace Weaver’s new book Notes from a Miner’s Canary: Essays on the State of N...
47 min
6821
Christopher DeRosa, “Political Indoctrination i...
One of the greatest challenges American military leaders have faced since the American Revolution has been to motivate citizens to forego their own sense of private identity in favor of the collective identity needed to wage war effectively.
67 min
6822
Harvey Young, “Embodying Black Experience: Stil...
With the election of Barack Obama, the first U.S. president of African descent, many people believed that America had ushered in an era of post-racial harmony. Harvey Young is not one of them. When it comes to the racial experience of black people,
58 min
6823
Eric C. Schneider, “Smack: Heroin and the Ameri...
When I arrived at college in the early 1980s, drugs were cool, music was cool, and drug-music was especially cool. The coolest of the cool drug-music bands was The Velvet Underground. They were from the mean streets of New York City (The Doors were fro...
74 min
6824
Michael Oriard, ” Brand NFL: Making and Selling...
It is the summer of discontent for fans of the National Football League. What will they do if team owners and players cannot reach a labor agreement before the fall season? The satirists at The Onion have offered their speculations: fans of the Green B...
73 min
6825
Gregory Koger, “Filibustering: A Political Hist...
In recent months, we’ve been hearing a lot of talk about filibustering in the Senate, about how Senate Democrats acquired a filibuster-proof majority in the 2008 elections only to lose it by the midterm elections of 2010 when Scott Brown was elected to...
60 min