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UNC Press Presents Podcast
General History May 2, 2023

Capital's Terrorists

Klansmen, Lawmen, and Employers in the Long Nineteenth Century

Chad E. Pearson

Hosted by Douglas Bell
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, employers, government officials, journalists, and powerful individuals deployed a variety of violent tactics to control ordinary people and workers who sought to secure power …

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Interviews with authors of University of North Carolina Press books.

Military History April 25, 2023

An Army Afire

How the US Army Confronted Its Racial Crisis in the Vietnam Era

Beth Bailey

Hosted by Caleb Zakarin
By the Tet Offensive in early 1968, what had been widely heralded as the best qualified, best-trained army in US history was descending into crisis as the Vietnam War raged …
Literary Studies April 23, 2023

Unmoored

The Search for Sincerity in Colonial America

Ana Schwartz

Hosted by Carmen Gomez-Galisteo
New England's Puritans were devoted to self-scrutiny. Consumed by the pursuit of pure hearts, they latched on to sincerity as both an ideal and a social process. It fueled examinations …
Disability Studies April 14, 2023

Committed

Remembering Native Kinship in and Beyond Institutions

Susan Burch

Hosted by Shu Wan
Between 1902 and 1934, the United States confined hundreds of adults and children from dozens of Native nations at the Canton Asylum for Insane Indians, a federal psychiatric hospital in …
Academic Life April 6, 2023

Gay on God's Campus

Mobilizing for LGBT Equality at Christian Colleges and Universities

Jonathan Coley

Hosted by Christina Gessler
Today’s book is: Gay on God's Campus: Mobilizing for LGBT Equality at Christian Colleges and Universities (UNC Press, 2018), by Jonathan Coley. Although the LGBT movement has made rapid gains …
Islamic Studies February 24, 2023

Everyday Islamic Law and the Making of Modern South Asia

Elizabeth Lhost

Hosted by Kristian Petersen
Beginning in the late eighteenth century, British rule transformed the relationship between law, society, and the state in South Asia. But professionals, alongside ordinary people without formal training in law …
Latin American Studies February 16, 2023

On Our Own Terms

Development and Indigeneity in Cold War Guatemala

Sarah Foss

Hosted by Rachel Newman
During the Cold War, U.S. intervention in Latin American politics, economics, and society grew in scope and complexity, with diplomatic legacies evident in today's hemispheric policies. Development became a key …
African American Studies January 31, 2023

Dismal Freedom

A History of the Maroons of the Great Dismal Swamp

J. Brent Morris

Hosted by Adam McNeil
The massive and foreboding Great Dismal Swamp sprawls over 2,000 square miles and spills over parts of Virginia and North Carolina. From the early seventeenth century, the nearly impassable Dismal …
Diplomatic History January 28, 2023

The Struggle for Iran

Oil, Autocracy, and the Cold War, 1951-1954

David S. Painter and Gregory Brew

Hosted by Grant Golub
Beginning with the nationalization of the Iranian oil industry in spring 1951 and ending with its reversal following the overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq in August 1953, the Iranian …
African American Studies January 20, 2023

Escape to the City

Fugitive Slaves in the Antebellum Urban South

Viola Franziska Müller

Hosted by Katrina Anderson
In Escape to the City: Fugitive Slaves in the Antebellum Urban South (UNC Press, 2022), Viola Franziska Müller examines runaways who camouflaged themselves among the free Black populations in Baltimore, Charleston …
African American Studies January 8, 2023

To Address You as My Friend

African Americans' Letters to Abraham Lincoln

Jonathan W. White

Hosted by Omari Averette-Phillips
Many African Americans of the Civil War era felt a personal connection to Abraham Lincoln. For the first time in their lives, an occupant of the White House seemed concerned …
American South December 23, 2022

The End of Public Execution

Race, Religion, and Punishment in the American South

Michael Ayers Trotti

Hosted by Lane Davis
Michael Ayers Trotti's The End of Public Execution: Race, Religion and Punishment in the American South (The University of North Carolina Press, 2022) documents the complex religious and cultural textures of …
American Studies December 23, 2022

The Democratic Collapse

How Gender Politics Broke a Party and a Nation, 1856-1861

Lauren N. Haumesser

Hosted by Jackson Reinhardt
Lauren N. Haumesser's The Democratic Collapse: How Gender Politics Broke a Party and a Nation, 1856-1861 (UNC Press, 2022) offers a fresh examination of antebellum politics comprehensively examines the ways that …
American West December 22, 2022

Defending the Arctic Refuge

A Photographer, an Indigenous Nation, and a Fight for Environmental Justice

Finis Dunaway

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
In far northeastern Alaska lies one of the most remarkable, and contested, places in North America: the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This coastal arctic region is a place of great natural …
Catholic Studies December 17, 2022

A Saint of Our Own

How the Quest for a Holy Hero Helped Catholics Become American

Kathleen Sprows Cummings

Hosted by Lauren Griffin
In A Saint of Our Own: How the Quest for a Holy Hero Helped Catholics Become American (University of North Carolina Press, 2019), Kathleen Sprows Cummings asks what drove U.S …
Anthropology November 29, 2022

Permanent Markers

Race, Ancestry, and the Body After the Genome

Sarah Abel

Hosted by Reighan Gillam
Over the past twenty years, DNA ancestry testing has morphed from a niche market into a booming international industry that encourages members of the public to answer difficult questions about …
Medicine November 24, 2022

Masters of Health

Racial Science and Slavery in US Medical Schools

Christopher Willoughby

Hosted by Claire Clark
Medical science in antebellum America was organized around a paradox: it presumed African Americans to be less than human yet still human enough to be viable as experimental subjects, as …
Medicine November 22, 2022

Accidental Kindness

A Doctor's Notes on Empathy

Michael Stein

Hosted by Rachel Pagones
We will all be patients sooner or later. And when we go to the doctor, when we're hurting, we tend to think in terms of cause and condemnation. We often …
Environmental Studies November 22, 2022

Hurricane Jim Crow

How the Great Sea Island Storm of 1893 Shaped the Lowcountry South

Caroline Grego

Hosted by Brian Hamilton
On an August night in 1893, the deadliest hurricane in South Carolina history struck the Lowcountry, killing thousands—almost all African American. But the devastating storm is only the beginning of …
Religion November 1, 2022

The Thing about Religion

An Introduction to the Material Study of Religions

David Morgan

Hosted by Tiatemsu Longkumer
Common views of religion typically focus on the beliefs and meanings derived from revealed scriptures, ideas, and doctrines. David Morgan has broadened that framework radically to encompass the understanding that …