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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 August 10, 2022

Visions of Nature

How Landscape Photography Shaped Settler Colonialism

Jarrod Hore

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
During the early years of photography, settlers around the Pacific World were fascinated with the landscapes of the places they conquered. According to Dr. Jarrod Hore, a postdoctoral researcher and …
American West July 20, 2022

Pioneering Death

The Violence of Boyhood in Turn-Of-the-Century Oregon

Peter Boag

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
On November 19, 1895, eighteen year old Lloyd Montgomery murdered his parents and their neighbor at his home in rural Linn County, Oregon. In Pioneering Death: The Violence of Boyhood in Turn-of-the-Century …
American West July 4, 2022

The Chinese Question

The Gold Rushes, Chinese Migration, and Global Politics

Mae Ngai

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
Between 1848 and 1899, miners extracted more gold from the earth than in the previous 3,000 years of human history combined. Each gold rush in this period, from the Sierra …
American West June 14, 2022

Refusing Death

Immigrant Women and the Fight for Environmental Justice in LA

Nadia Y. Kim

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
The air in Los Angeles can be lethal, and nobody knows this better than the city’s Latinx and Asian immigrants, argues Dr. Nadia Kim in Refusing Death: Immigrant Women and …
American West June 13, 2022

Making a Modern U.S. West

The Contested Terrain of a Region and Its Borders, 1898-1940

Sarah Deutsch

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
In less than half a century, the American West changed dramatically from a region of dynamic borders, politics, and identities to a more fixed zone of borders and demarcations …
American West May 30, 2022

A Failed Vision of Empire

The Collapse of Manifest Destiny, 1845-1872

Daniel J. Burge

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
Ask you average high school student or undergraduate about nineteenth century US history and if nothing else, they likely know the phrase "manifest destiny." The idea that the United States was destined …
American West May 12, 2022

Beneath the Backbone of the World

Blackfoot People and the North American Borderlands, 1720-1877

Ryan Hall

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
No matter what people call them today the northwestern Great Plains have been and continue to be Blackfoot country, argues Colgate University assistant professor Ryan Hall in Beneath the Backbone of …
American West April 25, 2022

The Closet and the Cul-de-Sac

The Politics of Sexual Privacy in Northern California

Clayton Howard

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
"I don't care what people do in their bedroom, but do they need to flaunt it?" This sentiment is a common refrain in American culture and politics when talking about …
American West April 22, 2022

Rodeo

An Animal History

Susan Nance

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
Animals are both the focus of rodeo and its most invisible participants, argues University of Guelph history professor Susan Nance in Rodeo: An Animal History (U Oklahoma, 2020). Nance flips the usual …
American West March 23, 2022

Emerald Street

A History of Hip Hop in Seattle

Daudi Abe

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
West Coast hip hop means much more than LA, argues Dr. Daudi Abe, a professor of humanities at Seattle Central College. In Emerald Street: A History of Hip Hop in Seattle (University of Washington Press …
American West March 7, 2022

Thunder in the West

The Life and Legends of Billy the Kid

Richard W. Etulain

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
Henry McCarty, aka William H. Bonney, aka Billy the Kid, is one of the most well known figures from the American West. His short life made an outsized impact on American …
American West February 17, 2022

The People's Revolt

Texas Populists and the Roots of American Liberalism

Gregg Cantrell

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
Pundits, politicians, and scholars often use words like "liberalism" and "populism" uncritically. Dr. Gregg Cantrell, professor of history at Texas Christian University, argues that not only do these terms have …
American West January 19, 2022

The Settler Sea

California's Salton Sea and the Consequences of Colonialism

Traci Brynne Voyles

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
The Salton Sea is a kaleidoscope. To some people, it's a waste land, a place of death only suitable for a dumping ground. For others, it's a clarion call, a …
American West January 10, 2022

Becoming Mary Sully

Toward an American Indian Abstract

Philip J. Deloria

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
Mary Sully was many things: a Dakota woman, an artist, and an American living through a heyday of early celebrity culture in the United States. All of these facets of her …
American West November 17, 2021

The Archaeology of Burning Man

The Rise and Fall of Black Rock City

Carolyn L. White

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
How do you do archaeological research on a place that exists for only one week per year, in the middle of the Nevada desert, and is based on the ethos …
American West October 21, 2021

South to Freedom

Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War

Alice L Baumgartner

Hosted by Stephen Hausmann
For some enslaved Americans, the path to freedom led not north, but south, argues Dr. Alice Baumgardner, an assistant professor of history at the University of Southern California. In South to …
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 …