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American South
American Studies December 1, 2023

Hidden in Plain Sight

Concealing Enslavement in American Visual Culture

Rachel Stephens

Hosted by Miranda Melcher
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In the decades leading up to the Civil War, abolitionists crafted a variety of visual messages about the plight of enslaved people, portraying the violence, familial separation, and dehumanisation that …

American South

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Interviews with scholars of the American South about their new books.

Military History November 25, 2023

American Visions

The United States, 1800-1860

Edward L. Ayers

Hosted by AJ Woodhams
American Visions: The United States, 1800-1860 (Norton, 2023) is a revealing history of the formative period when voices of dissent and innovation defied power and created visions of America still resonant …
American West November 23, 2023

Illusions of Empire

The Civil War and Reconstruction in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands

William S. Kiser

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
The 19th-century Mexican-American borderlands were a complicated place. By the 1860s, Confederates, Americans, Mexicans, French, and various Native societies were all scheming and vying for control of the region bifurcated by …
Latino Studies November 12, 2023

Making the Latino South

A History of Racial Formation

Cecilia Márquez

Hosted by Anna Lindner
The presence of Latinx people in the American South has long confounded the region's persistent racial binaries. In Making the Latino South: A History of Racial Formation (UNC Press, 2023) …
American South November 12, 2023

Resident Strangers

Immigrant Laborers in New South Alabama

Jennifer E. Brooks

Hosted by Southern Labor Studies Association
Immigrant laborers who came to the New South in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries found themselves poised uncomfortably between white employers and the Black working class, a liminal …
American Studies November 7, 2023

Symbols of Freedom

Slavery and Resistance Before the Civil War

Matthew J. Clavin

Hosted by Morteza Hajizadeh
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In the early United States, anthems, flags, holidays, monuments, and memorials were powerful symbols of an American identity that helped unify a divided people. A language of freedom played a …
Popular Culture November 5, 2023

A Curious Mix of People

The Underground Scene of '90s Austin

Greg Beets and Richard Whymark

Hosted by Rebekah Buchanan
Ask anyone outside of Austin what they know about the city and chances are the first thing they'll mention is the music. While the Armadillo Era has been well-chronicled, there …
American South November 4, 2023

A Man of Bad Reputation

The Murder of John Stephens and the Contested Landscape of North Carolina Reconstruction

Drew A. Swanson

Hosted by Deidre Tyler
Five years after the Civil War, North Carolina Republican state senator John W. Stephens was found murdered inside the Caswell County Courthouse. Stephens fought for the rights of freedpeople, and …
African American Studies October 28, 2023

Brooding over Bloody Revenge

Enslaved Women's Lethal Resistance

Nikki M. Taylor

Hosted by Katrina Anderson
From the colonial through the antebellum era, enslaved women in the US used lethal force as the ultimate form of resistance. By amplifying their voices and experiences, Brooding over Bloody …
Anthropology October 27, 2023

Crossing Waters

Undocumented Migration in Hispanophone Caribbean and Latinx Literature and Art

Marisel C. Moreno

Hosted by Reighan Gillam
Debates over the undocumented migration of Latin Americans invariably focus on the southern US border, but most migrants never cross that arbitrary line. Instead, many travel, via water, among the …
African American Studies October 21, 2023

Voodoo

The History of a Racial Slur

Danielle N. Boaz

Hosted by Miranda Melcher
Coined in the middle of the nineteenth century, the term "voodoo" has been deployed largely by people in the U.S. to refer to spiritual practices--real or imagined--among people of African …
African American Studies October 16, 2023

Africatown

America's Last Slave Ship and the Community It Created

Nick Tabor

Hosted by Katrina Anderson
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An evocative and epic story, Nick Tabor's Africatown: America's Last Slave Ship and the Community It Created (St. Martin's Press, 2023) charts the fraught history of America from those who …
African American Studies October 14, 2023

The Devil's Half Acre

The Untold Story of How One Woman Liberated the South's Most Notorious Slave Jail

Kristen Green

Hosted by Katrina Anderson
The inspiring true story of an enslaved woman who liberated an infamous slave jail and transformed it into one of the nation’s first HBCUs. In The Devil's Half Acre: The Untold …
African American Studies October 13, 2023

Invisible No More

The African American Experience at the University of South Carolina

Robert Greene and Tyler D. Parry

Hosted by Adam McNeil
Since its founding in 1801, African Americans have played an integral, if too often overlooked, role in the history of the University of South Carolina. Robert Greene and Tyler D …
American South October 13, 2023

Talking Back

Native Women and the Making of the Early South

Alejandra Dubcovsky

Hosted by Brandon Jett
Historian Alejandra Dubcovsky tells a story of war, slavery, loss, remembrance, and the women whose resilience and resistance transformed the colonial South. In exploring their lives she rewrites early American …
African American Studies October 10, 2023

The Vice President's Black Wife

The Untold Life of Julia Chinn

Amrita Chakrabarti Myers

Hosted by Katrina Anderson
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In The Vice President's Black Wife: The Untold Life of Julia Chinn (UNC Press, 2023), award-winning historian Amrita Chakrabarti Myers has recovered the riveting, troubling, and complicated story of Julia …
Music October 7, 2023

The Story of the B-52s

Neon Side of Town

Scott Creney and Brigette Adair Herron

Hosted by Bradley Morgan
The Story of the B-52s: Neon Side of Town (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) is the first critical history of one of the most legendary and influential bands in American popular music. Locating The …
General History October 4, 2023

Slavery, Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution

Maxine Berg and Pat Hudson

Hosted by Miranda Melcher
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In their remarkable new book Slavery, Capitalism, and the Industrial Revolution (Polity, 2023), Professor Maxine Berg and Professor Pat Hudson “follow the money” to document in revealing detail the role …
African American Studies October 1, 2023

Black Female Intellectuals in 19th Century America

Born to Bloom Unseen?

Rebecca J. Fraser

Hosted by Katrina Anderson
Drawing on letters, personal testimony, works of art, novels, and historic Black newspapers, this book is an interdisciplinary exploration of Black women’s contributions to the intellectual life of nineteenth-century America …
African American Studies September 26, 2023

Before the Movement

The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights

Dylan C. Penningroth

Hosted by Katrina Anderson
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A prize-winning scholar draws on astonishing new research to demonstrate how Black people used the law to their advantage long before the Civil Rights Movement. The familiar story of civil …