New Books Network

About Stephen Hausmann

Dr. Stephen R. Hausmann is an assistant professor of history at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota.

NBN Episodes hosted by Stephen:

American West October 14, 2021

Imperial Metropolis

Los Angeles, Mexico, and the Borderlands of American Empire, 1865–1941

Jessica M. Kim

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
Between 1865 and 1900, the population of Los Angeles grew from around 5,000 people to over 100,000. With population growth that explosive came the opportunity for vast riches to be …
American West September 17, 2021

Black Towns, Black Futures

The Enduring Allure of a Black Place in the American West

Karla Slocum

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
Oklahoma's Black towns aren't just places of the past - they maintain an enduring allure, and look toward the future, argues Karla Slocum in her new book, Black Towns, Black Futures: The …
American West September 15, 2021

Facilitating Injustice

The Complicity of Social Workers in the Forced Removal and Incarceration of Japanese Americans, 1941-1946

Yoosun Park

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
Between 1942 and 1945, the United States government forcibly removed approximately 120,000 people "of Japanese ancestry" from their homes and into self-proclaimed concentration camps across the American West and South …
American West August 27, 2021

Basque Immigrants and Nevada's Sheep Industry

Geopolitics and the Making of an Agricultural Workforce, 1880-1954

Iker Saitua

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
Ranching in the West meant more than cowboys and cattle drives, writes Dr. Iker Saitua, and assistant professor of public policy and economic history at the University of the Basque …
American West August 9, 2021

Living the California Dream

African American Leisure Sites during the Jim Crow Era

Alison Rose Jefferson

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
Living the California Dream: African American Leisure Sites During the Jim Crow Era (Nebraska, 2020) is about the places where the past and future meet. Throughout the early twentieth century …
American West July 21, 2021

West of Slavery

The Southern Dream of a Transcontinental Empire

Kevin Waite

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
The geography of American slavery was continental, argues Dr. Kevin Waite, an assistant professor at Durham University, in West of Slavery: The Southern Dream of a Transcontinental Empire (UNC Press, 2021). Rather …
American West July 9, 2021

Flood on the Tracks

Living, Dying, and the Nature of Disaster in the Elkhorn River Basin

Todd M. Kerstetter

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
If floods are inevitable, why do humans insist on building alongside riverbanks? Todd Kerstetter, professor of history at Texas Christian University, tries to answer that question in Flood on the Tracks: Living …
American West June 16, 2021

We Are the Land

A History of Native California

Damon B. Akins and William J. Bauer

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
California is often used as a synecdoche for the United States itself - America in microcosm. Yet, California was, is, and will always be, Native space. This fact is forcefully argued …
American West June 9, 2021

The Giants and Their City

Major League Baseball in San Francisco, 1976-1992

Lincoln A. Mitchell

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
In 1976, the San Francisco Giants headed north of the border and became the Toronto Giants - or so the sportswriters of the time would have you believe. In The Giants …
American West May 21, 2021

Frontier Rebels

The Fight for Independence in the American West, 1765-1776

Patrick Spero

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
Boston, Philadelphia, London...Fort Loudon, PA. One of these places is not usually included when imagining the crucial scenes of the American Revolution. In Frontier Rebels: The Fight for Independence in the American West …
American West May 7, 2021

Writing Kit Carson

Fallen Heroes in a Changing West

Susan Lee Johnson

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
The only constant in Western history is change. Susan Lee Johnson, Harry Reid Endowed Chair in the History of the Intermountain West at UNLV, knows this better than most. Author of …
American West April 13, 2021

California Exposures

Envisioning Myth and History

Richard White

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
This book began as a bet between a father and son: could Richard White, Professor Emeritus at Stanford University and renowned historian of the American West, tell a complete history of …
American West April 9, 2021

Rodeo as Refuge, Rodeo as Rebellion

Gender, Race, and Identity in the American Rodeo

Elyssa Ford

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
Imagine a rodeo rider atop a bucking bronco, hat in hand, straining to remain astride. Is the rider in your mind's eye white? Is the person male? Popular imaginings and high …
American West March 8, 2021

Calamity

The Many Lives of Calamity Jane

Karen Jones

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
Calamity Jane is an enigma of Western history. Clad in men’s clothing, she rode across the American West in the latter half of the 19th century, making a name for …
American West February 24, 2021

Cinematic Settlers

The Settler Colonial World in Film

Janne Lahti and Rebecca Weaver-Hightower

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
The medium of cinema emerged during the height of Victorian-era European empires, and as a result, settler colonial imperialism has thematically suffused film for well over a century. In Cinematic …
American West February 23, 2021

This Land Is My Land

Rebellion in the West

James R. Skillen

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
On January 6th, 2021, when right wing supporters of Donald Trump staged an insurrection at the US Capitol building, they were participating in a long tradition of conservative rebellion with …
American West October 26, 2020

To Live and Defy in LA

How Gangsta Rap Changed America

Felicia Angeja Viator

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
In 1985, Greg Mack, a DJ working for Los Angeles radio station KDAY, played a song that sounded like nothing else on West Coast airwaves: Toddy Tee’s “The Batteram,” a …
American West September 30, 2020

The Destruction of the Bison

An Environmental History, 1750-1920

Andrew C. Isenberg

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
In 1800, tens of millions of bison roamed the North American Great Plains. By 1900, fewer than 1,000 remained. In The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750-1920 (Cambridge …
American West September 11, 2020

A Bad Peace and A Good War

Spain and the Mescalero Apache Uprising of 1795-1799

Mark Santiago

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
In August 1795, Apaches wiped out two Spanish patrols In the desert borderlands of the what is today the American Southwest and Mexican north. This attack ended what had bene …
American West August 19, 2020

Unfair Labor?

American Indians and the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago

David R. M. Beck

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
The 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition was in many ways the crowning event of the nineteenth century United States. Held in Chicago, the metropolis of the West, and visited by tens …
American West August 5, 2020

Breakaway Americas

The Unmanifest Future of Jacksonian America

Thomas Richards Jr.

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
In Breakaway Americas: The Unmanifest Future of Jacksonian America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020), Thomas Richards Jr., a history teacher at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy, argues that the map of …
American West March 9, 2020

Color Coded

Party Politics in the American West, 1950–2016

Walter Nugent

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
The political West is far from monochrome, writes Walter Nugent in Color Coded: Party Politics in the American West, 1950–2016 (University of Oklahoma Press, 2018). Over the last half century …
American West December 19, 2019

Untangling a Red, White, and Black Heritage

A Personal History of the Allotment Era

Darnella Davis

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
In Untangling a Red, White, and Black Heritage: A Personal History of the Allotment Era (U New Mexico Press, 2018), Darnella Davis combines the personal with the national in telling …
American West November 25, 2019

Outriders

Rodeo at the Fringes of the American West

Rebecca Scofield

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
Rodeo is one of the indelible images of culture in the American West. The John Wayne-like cowboy tenaciously hanging on to the bucking bronc is a classic vision of what …