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About Monica Black

NBN Episodes hosted by Monica:

General History May 11, 2018

To Belong in Buenos Aires

Germans, Argentines, and the Rise of a Pluralist Society

Benjamin Bryce

Hosted by Monica Black
Benjamin Bryce, Assistant Professor of History at the University of Northern British Columbia, has written a history of belonging within a culturally plural Argentina. To Belong in Buenos Aires: Germans …
General History October 23, 2017

Agrarian Crossings

Reformers and the Remaking of the US and Mexican Countryside

Tore Olsson

Hosted by Monica Black
Tore C. Olsson's Agrarian Crossings: Reformers and the Remaking of the US and Mexican Countryside (Princeton University Press, 2017) tells a remarkable and under-appreciated story. It's about how, in the …
General History August 13, 2017

Modern Hungers

Food and Power in Twentieth-Century Germany

Alice Weinreb

Hosted by Monica Black
Food is a hot topic these days, and not just among the folks posting pictures of their dinner on Instagram. A growing number of scholars in many fields study food's …
General History July 26, 2017

Heresy and Dissent in the Carolingian Empire

The Case of Gottschalk of Orbais

Matthew Gillis

Hosted by Monica Black
In the popular imagination, heresy belongs to the Christian Middle Ages in much the way that the Crusades or courtly culture do. Non-specialists in the medieval field may assume that …
General History July 11, 2017

Hitler's Monsters

A Supernatural History of the Third Reich

Eric Kurlander

Hosted by Monica Black
The idea that there is some unholy connection between Nazism and occultism has a lengthy history. It long predates 1933, when the National Socialist party took power in Germany. But …
General History July 6, 2017

Diminishing the Bill of Rights

Barron v. Baltimore and the Foundations of American Liberty

William Davenport Mercer

Hosted by Monica Black
William Davenport Mercer's Diminishing the Bill of Rights: Barron v. Baltimore and the Foundations of American Liberty (University of Oklahoma Press, 2017) argues that if we want to understand how …
General History April 12, 2017

Hitler's American Model

The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law

James Q. Whitman

Hosted by Monica Black
James Q. Whitman, Ford Foundation Professor of Comparative and Foreign Law at Yale Law School, began researching the book that became Hitler's American Model: The United States and the Making …
General History June 28, 2015

Excavating Nations

Archaeology, Museums, and the German-Danish Borderlands

J. Laurence Hare

Hosted by Monica Black
A recent book review I read began with the line "borderlands are back." It's certainly true that more and more historians have used borderland regions as the stage for some …
General History May 1, 2015

Empire's Children

Child Emigration, Welfare, and the Decline of the British World, 1869-1967

Ellen Boucher

Hosted by Monica Black
For almost 100 years, it seemed like a good, even wholesome and optimistic idea to take young, working-class and poor British children and resettle them, quite on their own and …
General History January 30, 2015

German Intellectuals and the Challenge of Democratic Renewal

Culture and Politics after 1945

Sean Forner

Hosted by Monica Black
The Federal Republic of Germany is often held up today as one of the world's great democracies, where the commitment to such ideals as transparency, careful deliberation, social and political …
General History June 26, 2014

Religion, Race and the Making of Confederate Kentucky, 1830-1880

Luke E. Harlow

Hosted by Monica Black
Luke E. Harlow, Religion, Race and the Making of Confederate Kentucky, 1830-1880 (Cambridge University Press, 2014) examines the role of religion, and more specifically, conservative evangelical Protestant theology, in the …
General History February 4, 2014

Kindred by Choice

Germans and American Indians since 1800

H. Glenn Penny

Hosted by Monica Black
If you have spent a bit of time in Germany or with German friends, you may have noticed the deep interest and affinity many Germans have for American Indians. What …
General History November 16, 2013

Terror and Democracy in West Germany

Karrin Hanshew

Hosted by Monica Black
In West Germany in September and October of 1977, a group of self-described urban guerrillas of the Red Army Faction (RAF) kidnapped industrialist Hanns Martin Schleyer. In exchange for Schleyer …
General History October 23, 2013

Raising Germans in the Age of Empire

Youth and Colonial Culture, 1871-1914

Jeff Bowersox

Hosted by Monica Black
Germany embarked on the age of imperialism a bit later than other global powers, and the German experience of empire was much shorter-lived than that of Britain or France or …
General History September 11, 2013

Plutopia

Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters

Kate Brown

Hosted by Monica Black
Kate Brown's Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters (Oxford University Press, 2013) is a tale of two atomic cities--one in the US (Richland …
General History August 5, 2013

Fearful Spirits, Reasoned Follies

The Boundaries of Superstition in Late Medieval Europe

Michael D. Bailey

Hosted by Monica Black
Superstitions flourish in our world--think of the elaborate rituals of baseball players, or knocking wood to avoid tempting fate, or that bit of happiness (or relief) we might experience from …