With the semiquincentennial behind us, launching the next 250 with my 251st #ScholarSunday thread of great public scholarly writing & work, podcast episodes, new & forthcoming books from the last week. Add more below, share as widely as possible, & enjoy, all!
First, a note that we’ll be compiling a year-end meta-thread featuring some of the best public scholarly pieces & work from 2025. Check out the call here & please share nominations, including your own of course!
Articles:
Starting with a bunch of favorite pieces from the week as usual, including CNN’s Ray Sanchez with long-overdue & phenomenal news about one of my favorite Americans, Ely Parker.
Great stuff from Walter D. Greason for the Minnesota Spokesman-Reporter on Black Minnesota, past & present, as a source of inspiration worldwide.
For Thursday’s Transgender Day of Remembrance, CrossCurrents editor SB Rodríguez-Plate shared a guest post for the UNC Press blog on transgender religious life.
Wonderful essay for The Nation from Natan Last (excerpted from his forthcoming book) on the hidden politics of the crossword puzzle.
For the next installment of the Urban History Association’s Metropole blog’s Metropolitan Consumption series, David Bruno wrote on groundbreaking Black Mayor Larry Langford’s struggle to save Birmingham, Alabama.
Speaking of urban studies, check out Peter Burke for the Network of Early Modern Senses’s Hypotheses on the smellscapes of cities.
Over at the Journal of the Early Republic’s Panorama, Shannan Mason offered a lesson plan on the architecture of firearms & power in early America.
Couple of compelling pieces this week for the AHA’s Perspectives, including Rhiannon Garth Jones & Matthew Gabriele on how trade press books can effectively communicate our expertise.
While Samuel Miner shared the controversial & compelling story of German research into federal ministries’ Nazi pasts.
For lots of great perspectives on Teaching History, check out the latest issue of that open-access journal of pedagogical methods & practices.
& speaking of open-access, that’s also the case for Eetu Mäkelä, James Misson, Devani Singh, & Mikko Tolonen’s Digital Scholarship in the Humanities article on the groundbreaking Early English Books Online project.
Tons of great stuff as ever at the new Pittsburgh Review of Books, including this essay from its founder, my friend Ed Simon, reflecting on millennial optimism.
& I’m honored to have published my first essay for PRoB, an examination of the 21st century genre I’m calling Katrina Culture.
A trio of columns from Saturday Evening Post colleagues to share this week, including Selina Alipour Tabrizi on how matcha has evolved from cultural tradition to viral beverage.
Teresa Bitler wrote for the Post on the other Gettysburg address: President Eisenhower’s farmhouse retreat.
& I always enjoy the chance to read more about the influential Sarah Josepha Hale, highlighted here by Nancy Rubin Stuart as the mother of Thanksgiving.
Current Events:
Turning to current events public scholarly writing, here’s a gift link to Clint Smith’s vital Atlantic essay on why we must tell students the truth about American history.
Thanks to Walter D. Greason for sharing another gift link, this one to Alissa Wilkinson’s New York Times Critic’s Notebook essay on documentary filmmaking & AI.
Speaking of AI & other misinformation machines, here’s George Monbiot for The Guardian on how the super-rich are preventing us from fighting the climate crisis.
With everyone talking about Zohran Mamdani’s White House visit, check out Peter Dreier for Talking Points Memo Café on historical contexts for Democratic Socialists like Mamdani & Seattle’s new Mayor Katie Wilson.
Bracing but also inspiring reporting from the AP’s Kate Payne on how Lee Grant, blacklisted during McCarthyism, is speaking out against Florida’s new educational standards.
& speaking of inspiring, check out Mira Jacob’s Harper’s Bazaar interview with legendary filmmaker Mira Nair on her son’s mayoral victory & much more.
Podcasts:
Tons of new podcast episodes to share this week, including the latest for Kelly Therese Pollock’s Unsung History, featuring Jordan B. Smith on the early history of rum.
Episode 75 of Kate Carpenter’s Drafting the Past podcast features Jessica Lepler on the process of writing her newly released second book, Canal Dreamers.
The new episode of the CineHistorians podcast focuses on Wong Kar-Wai’s masterpiece In the Mood for Love (2000).
While for the latest History on Film podcast episode, Chris DeVille joined to talk about his new book on the indie music boom of the early 2000s.
Following up the above pieces from the Pittsburgh Review of Books, check out the debut episode of Nathan Pensky & Mason Stockstill’s new PRoB podcast, Third Person Limited, answering the vital question “Is Reading Good?”
Episode 426 of Liz Covart’s Ben Franklin’s World is a particularly timely one, featuring Michael Wise on indigenous agriculture & native foodways beyond the First Thanksgiving.
For the latest episode of the Presidencies podcast, Charles Ferguson joined to discuss his new book Presidential Seclusion: The Power of Camp David.
For her Civics & Coffee podcast, Alycia Asai interviewed Jonathan Mahler about his new book The Gods of New York & how the 1980s remade the city.
While for her usual Saturday podcast episode, Asai discussed the Battle of Little Bighorn, the victory that doomed a native nation.
& I enjoyed this short piece from Dave Taylor, host of Lincoln Assassination Tours, on how assassination conspirator John Surratt was confronted by members of the Kaw tribe.
Looking beyond the U.S., the third episode of Matt Gabriele’s American Medieval podcast features Sarah E. Bond on the mythic “Fall of Rome.”
For the How to Academy podcast, David Olusoga & Alan Lester reflected on the importance of truth & ethics in how we remember the history of the British Empire.
While episode 66 of Waitman Beorn’s Holocaust History podcast features Amy Shapiro Simon on how Jews described their oppressors in Yiddish diaries.
& for episode 3 of their Historias podcast, Renata Keller & Dustin Walcher talked with a roster of scholars on Cuba’s presence & role in the Cold War.
Turning to current events conversations, for his latest America: A History podcast episode Liam Heffernan was joined by Nicholas Grant to discuss the past & present of the Voting Rights Act.
For the latest episode of the Scholars Strategy Network’s No Jargon podcast, Katie Kronick discussed how our justice system handles defendants with disabilities.
For episode 11 of their This Ain’t It podcast, Melissa & Matthew Teutsch use the 2017 sermon “How to Be Blessed” to discuss the wrongs & rights of narratives of blessings.
Episode 3 of Dana R. Fisher’s COPOut podcast features Lauren Gifford & Pamela McElwee on the future of carbon governance.
While for her latest Freedom Over Fascism conversation, Stephanie G. Wilson interviewed Debra Shushan on Middle East politics & the Trump regime.
For the new episode of his This Old Democracy podcast, Micah Sifry was joined by Daniel Schlozman to consider whether “hollow parties” can be rejuvenated to save demoracy.
Walter D. Greason & Tim Fielder joined Hip Hop Education host Manny Faces to discuss their book The Graphic History of Hip Hop.
& I’ll end this section with an episode featuring me, part two of my conversation about Of Thee I Sing & the contested history of American patriotism with Niels Eichhorn & Andrew Houck on their excellent War of the Rebellion podcast.
Black Perspectives and Made By History:
Over at the AAIHS’s Black Perspectives blog, Ashley Everson interviewed Erika Edwards about their role in editing the Global Black Thought special issue “Race & Identity in Colonial Latin America & the Caribbean.”
Three excellent pieces this week for Time’s Made By History blog, including Nathaniel C. Green on the Missouri crisis & the perils of political compromise.
Rebecca Scofield wrote for Made By History on the history that explains the witch’s broomstick in the Oz films (but not the novels).
& here’s Suzanne Enzerink for Made By History on histories of Hollywood censorship & the real problem with Trump’s proposed tariffs on films.
Books:
Speaking of Hollywood histories, I’m so excited that my wife Vaughn Joy’s first book, Selling Out Santa: Hollywood Christmas Films in the Age of McCarthy, is out this week from De Gruyter Brill & available for all your holiday shopping needs!
Also published this week was Oscar Winberg’s Archie Bunker for President: How One Television Show Remade American Politics from UNC Press.
& likewise newly published is Tim Galsworthy’s The Republican House Divided: Civil War Memory, Civil Rights, & the Transformation of the GOP from University of South Carolina Press.
Out now is the reconceptualized 4th edition of Frank Costigliola & Barbara J. Keys’ edited collection Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations from Cambridge University Press.
Published a few weeks back but new to these threads is Jon Coburn’s Not Just a Housewife: Women Strike for Peace & the Cold War Women’s Peace Movement from UMass Press.
Forthcoming on Tuesday from Pengin Random House is Natan Last’s Across the Universe: The Past, Present, & Future of the Crossword Puzzle.
While forthcoming on 12/2 from UNC Press is Aaron G. Fountain Jr.’s High School Students Unite!: Teen Activism, Education Reform, & FBI Surveillance in Postwar America; see this Smithsonian magazine excerpt for the provocative story of when parents collaborated with the FBI to spy on rebellious teens during the 1960s.
Also forthcoming on 12/2 from MIT Press is W. Patrick McCray’s README: A Bookish History of Computing from Electronic Brains to Everything Machines.
Forthcoming on 12/15 from Cornell University Press is Nathan K. Finney’s Orchestrating Power: The American Associational State in the First World War.
& check out Megan Kate Nelson’s new website, featuring her next book, The Westerners: Mythmaking & Belonging on the American Frontier, forthcoming in March!
For the UNC Press blog, Adrienne Krone shared a guest post excerpted from her new book Free-Range Religion: Alternative Food Movements & Religious Life in the United States.
While the UHA’s Metropole blog featured an interview with Marc J. Dunkelman on his new book Why Nothing Works: Who Killed Progress–& How to Bring It Back.
For the latest USIH book review, Catharine Coleborne wrote about Rachel Plotnick’s Power Button: A history of Pleasure, Panic, & the Politics of Pushing.
& for a fascinating adaptation of a recent book, check out the Historical Society of the New York Courts’ new audio drama How Emeline Got Free, based on Albert M. Rosenblatt’s book The Eight: The Lemmon Slave Case & the Fight for Freedom.
Newsletters and Blog Posts:
Gonna end with a bunch of great newsletters & blog posts as ever, starting with Chris Geidner for Law Dork on what E.B. White can tell us about the DHS’s horrific “Operation Charlotte’s Web.”
Kevin M. Kruse wrote for his Campaign Trails newsletter on why Mike Johnson is the least speaker ever.
While Rebecca Solnit wrote for her Meditations in an Emergency newsletter on Marjorie Taylor Greene & the fraught but vital question of how big our tent should be.
Couple great newsletters on the Gettysburg Address’s anniversary to share, including Kevin M. Levin for his Civil War Memory on broader debates between remembering & forgetting in Gettysburg.
While Mark Hertling wrote for The Bulwark on enduring lessons from Lincoln’s vision.
Turning to other historically focused posts, Sarah Rose, Assistant Editor of the Victoria County History project, wrote for the On History blog about launching Lonsdale Ward, the 250th volume in the “Big Red Book” series.
For his Matt’s Historical Ephemera newsletter, Matt Eaton told the story of entertainments for Indian troops in the WWII Mediterranean.
While for her Imperfect Union newsletter, Lindsay M. Chervinsky wrote about finding joy in research during these tough times.
Thanks to Ben Edwards for sharing this performance of “Dear, Paul Revere, or Forge, Shape, Shine!,” a new poem from Massachusetts’ Inaugural Poet Laureate Regie O’Hare Gibson.
Speaking of great poetry, check out the fifth & final installment of Etienne Toussaint & Robert Monson’s poetic journey through Sinners.
Gonna end with other great cultural studies pieces as usual, including Matthew Teutsch for his Interminable Rambling column on literary theft in R.F. Kuang’s Yellowface.
For his Academic Bubble newsletter, Dion Georgiou analyzed the 2021 documentary Foot and Mouth—The Killing Fields in Wales.
Great stuff from Sonny Bunch for The Bulwark on Pope Leo & treating movie theaters as cathedrals.
For Bright Wall/Dark Room’s special issue on cinematic teachers, Patrick Fiorilli wrote about the failed mentors of the Star Wars saga.
The great Outlaw Vern offered his review of one of the season’s most vital new films, Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein.
My wife Vaughn Joy has a forthcoming review essay for Contingent magazine on del Toro’s film & cinematic adaptations of Shelley’s novel more broadly, so keep an eye out for that; but in the meantime, here’s her latest awesome Review Roulette post, a race & ethnicity approach to Clash by Night (1952).
& I’ll end with Benjamin Dreyer for his A Word About… newsletter, offering his always delightful season orthographic reminders!
PS. I’m sure I missed plenty as ever, so please share more public scholarly writing, podcasts, new & forthcoming books below. & remember to share best-of-2025 work (including yours!) for our special year-end meta-thread. Thanks, & happy reading, listening, & learning, all!
PPS. I’m hoping to have a thread next Sunday as usual, but whether I do or not, hope it’s a restful, recuperative, & reflective holiday week, my friends.
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