Extreme & dangerous ice out there, & a nasty winter storm too, so stay in with all the great public scholarly writing, podcasts, new & forthcoming books (well, those you can pre-order!) in my 260th #ScholarSunday thread. Add more below, share widely, & stay warm & safe, all!
First, if you have ideas for your own public scholarly engagements with 2026 historic anniversaries, check out Clio & the Contemporary’s call for submissions, featured our Black & White & Read All Over site’s Announcements page!
Articles:
Starting with a number of great pieces for this year’s particularly fraught & important MLK Day, including Sherrilyn Ifill for her newsletter on remembering the day’s true meanings.
Speaking of Clio & the Contemporary, Kristopher Bryan Burrell contributed an MLK Day piece on the equally inspiring & important life & work of Coretta Scott King!
For his Civil War Memory newsletter, Kevin M. Levin wrote on the connections between King’s most famous speech & the Civil War.
Over at her History in the Margins blog, Pamela D. Toler shared memories from her visit to the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis.
Interesting New York Times column from Colin Moynihan (that’s a gift link) on what Harper Lee’s letters reveal of her views on the South and Civil Rights.
Important piece from Matt Glazebrook for the BBC on how the Red Scare erased the iconic artist, athlete, & Civil Rights activist Paul Robeson.
& finally, I’ll reshare my 2020 Saturday Evening Post Considering History column on how MLK helps us remember the foundational & enduring legacies of African American critical patriotism.
Turning to other great public scholarly writing from the week, two excellent pieces for Metropole & NiCHE’s Urban & Environmental Dialogues series, including John Bessai on reading the city through counter-monuments of ecology and Yohad Zacarias S. on substations, informality, & environmental changes.
Speaking of urban histories, Jordan Hirsch wrote for The Lens on the uncertain fate of some key New Orleans jazz landmarks.
While David S. Rotenstein wrote for the Northern Kentucky Tribune on how Covington’s alleys provide connections between past and future.
For Commonplace journal, David Stowe shared his experiences writing a historical novel about the life & legacy of the Revolutionary composer William Billings.
Over at Nursing Clio, Emily Homer traced the medical misogyny & marketing of addiction behind the 19C patent industry’s exploitation of women.
While James M. Lindsay followed up the Council on Foreign Relations’ survey of historians about the best & worst foreign policy decisions in US history with some further conversation between him, Mary Dudziak, & Christopher McKnight Nichols.
Two compelling open-access academic articles to share this week, including Evelyn Koch for Anglistik on how folk horror reimagines the 17th century as Early Modernism.
Also open-access is David James Gill & many colleagues for the American Historical Review on the fascinating question of when & how historians should predict the past.
A trio of important pieces this week for the AHA’s Perspectives blog, including Trishula Patel on Zohran Mamdani’s African Indian identity.
Hope Shannon wrote for Perspectives on how we can find & build community & connection across the historical disciplines.
& here’s the latest Perspectives AHA Member Spotlight, featuring the 19th century & Civil War historian Martha Hodes.
A pair of excellent columns from Saturday Evening Post colleagues to share this week, including the latest for Einav Rabinovitch-Fox’s Common Threads column, on a WWII silk boycott.
While for his Our Better Nature column, Paul Hetzler wrote about the fascinating ways in which trees defend themselves.
& I’m very proud of my latest Considering History column for the Post, highlighting the Great Society origins & vital roles & legacies of one of the casualties of Trump’s first year in office, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Speaking of public broadcasting, I was very glad to see Lucy Schiller’s essay for Columbia Journalism Review on the NPR & Colorado Public Media stations that are suing the administration, featuring insights from Josh Shepperd.
Current Events:
My column is one of a few pieces for the one-year anniversary of the inauguration, including Daniel W. Drezner & Elizabeth N. Saunders for Foreign Affairs on the unconstrained presidency & the end of American primacy.
While Aziz Rana wrote for Equator magazine on a legal scholar’s diary of the first year of Trump’s disastrous return to power.
Last week’s thread included a ton of great pieces on the Minnesota occupation, & they continued this week, including Heba Gowayed & Victor Ray for The Guardian on why abolishing ICE is only the start of what’s necessary.
For the Boston Review, Deborah Chasman interviewed Robin D.G. Kelley on how we can think about ICE in the context of the broader history of police violence.
While Kerry Howley wrote for New York Magazine’s Intelligencer on the model of neighborhood resistance we’re seeing in Minneapolis.
Clergy have been leading figures in that resistance, so I really appreciate Edward Feser’s essay for First Things on how church history doesn’t support Trump’s imperial expansions.
For the Milwaukee Courier, Michelle Bryant wrote about warnings we can draw from the tragic histories of backlash to Reconstruction.
Speaking of learning from history, Emily J. Arendt wrote for the Panorama’s Early Republic Tracker on the NPS removing the slavery exhibit at Philadelphia’s President’s House site.
While John Garrison Marks distilled his forthcoming book on the debates over Washington & slavery into a Time column on the exhibit’s removal.
& John also joined Kevin M. Levin on his Civil War Memory podcast to discuss the removal.
Over at Balls & Strikes, G.S. Hans wrote about the revocation of Emily Suski’s offer to be the University of Arkansas Law School Dean after she signed a brief defending trans rights.
Vital Guardian column from the Friends of Attention activist group on how we can defend ourselves from Big Tech’s “human fracking” of our attention.
& I also enjoyed & agree with Jeremy Varon for The Guardian on why we need a new antiwar movement, & how it can win.
Podcasts:
Tons of important new podcast episodes this week, including Lindsay Chervinsky joining History As It Happens to talk about the 250th anniversary of Common Sense.
The Presidencies Podcast has kicked off a new series on James Monroe with the first episode, on his pre-presidency arc from soldier to statesman.
While episode 195 of Evan Axelbank’s Axelbank Reports History & Today features Andrew Burstein on his book Being Thomas Jefferson: An Intimate History.
For episode 84 of her Drafting the Past podcast, Kate Carpenter was joined by Shaun Richman to discuss his two books & concurrent activist work on labor history & rights.
Over at the Colombia Calling podcast, host Richard McColl interviewed Jessica M. Lepler on her book Canal Dreamers & the quest for the Nicaragua Canal.
The new episode of Nostalgia Trap features Aaron G. Fountain Jr. on his new book High School Students Unite!: Teen Activism, Education Reform, & FBI Surveillance in Postwar America.
While for his Talking History series, Peter Farrelly interviewed Tim Galsworthy about his new book The Republican House Divided: Civil War Memory, Civil Rights, & the Transformation of the GOP.
The latest episode of Rich Napolitano’s Shipwrecks & Sea Dogs podcast tells the story of the 1940 sinking of the RMS Niagara & the subsequent efforts to recover its gold.
Over at the History on Film podcast, host Ross Lennon was joined by Robert Spinelli & Bethan Jones to discuss the history of conspiracy theories in pop culture; for more, see Spinelli’s new edited collection The Lizard People Don’t Want You to Read This: Essays on Conspiracy Theory in Popular Culture from McFarland.
For The Pod & the Pendulum, the hosts were joined by Alex Pagliuca to discuss the history & legacy of Hitchcock’s Psycho.
While over at the Civics & Coffee podcast, host Alycia Asai interviewed Rachel Lee Perez about her book on the histories behind another horror classic, Jaws.
Alycia also shared the latest episode in her ongoing Gilded Age series, this one focused on the Great Railroad Strike of 1877.
For episode four of their Historias podcast, Renata Keller & Dustin Walcher discussed the Bay of Pigs invasion with scholars including Michael Bustamante & many more.
While for his revamped America: The Story of the USA podcast, Liam Heffernan was joined by Barbara Perry to discuss the life & legacy of JFK.
Liam also shared his latest In the Making current events conversation, featuring Emma Long on the end of the “special relationship” between the US and the UK.
For episode 70 of his Holocaust History podcast, Waitman Beorn was joined by Elissa Bemporad to discuss women’s experiences of the Holocaust.
While for the New Books Network’s Genocide Studies, Kelly McFall interviewed Mark Celinscak about his edited collection Global Approaches to the Holocaust: Memory, History, & Representation.
Over at the Whiplash podcast, hosts Maxwell Kuzma & Emma Cieslik discussed with American Catholics get wrong about persecution.
Turning to fully current events conversations, for their This Ain’t It podcast Melissa & Matthew Teutsch discussed the church protest against ICE & what happens when protest enters the sanctuary.
For their The Oath & the Office podcast, John Fugelsang & Corey Brettschneider were joined by Glenn Kirschner to discuss the DOJ indictment against Trump that never came.
The latest episode of the Scholars Strategy Network’s No Jargon podcast features Anthony Hernandez on the ripple effects of the ongoing attacks on higher ed.
For her latest American Conversations episode, Heather Cox Richardson interviewed Representative Jason Crow.
While over at Stephanie G. Wilson’s Freedom Over Fascism podcast, she interviewed Run for Something founder Amanda Litman on the hundreds of thousands of new candidates in the pipeline.
& I’ll end this section with an inspiring conversation for all public scholars, episode 99 of Leslie Wang’s Yours Words Unleashed featuring publicist Amanda Ice on Book Publicity 101.
Black Perspectives:
Over at the AAIHS’s Black Perspectives blog, the editors shared that early bird registration is now open for the organization’s late-March conference in Pittsburgh.
While editor Robert Greene II shared his interview with Jarvis C. McInnis about his new book Afterlives of the Plantation: Plotting Agrarian Futures in the Global Black South from Columbia University Press.
Books:
Speaking of scholarly books, for one I missed that’s also now on sale, check out Jason H. Dormady’s Conflict & Correspondence: Belonging & Urban Community in Guadalajara, Mexico, 1939-1947 from University of Nebraska Press.
Out this week from Penguin Random House is Victor Navarro-Remesal’s fascinating study of playfulness in video games, Zen & Slow Games.
Forthcoming Tuesday (January 27) from Harvard University Press is Mélanie Lamotte’s By Flesh & Toil: How Sex, Race, & Labor Shaped the Early French Empire.
Also forthcoming Tuesday from Harper Collins is Brooke N. Newman’s The Crown’s Silence: The Hidden History of the British Monarchy & Slavery in the Americas.
One more January 27 publication to highlight, Jamila Michener & Mallory E. SoRelle’s Uncivil Democracy: How Access to Justice Shapes Political Power from Princeton University Press.
While out on February 1 from UNC Press is the 2nd edition of Karen L. Cox’s magisterial No Common Ground: Confederate Monuments & the Ongoing Fight for Racial Justice.
Speaking of UNC Press, check out their latest blog post, a guest post from Jennifer Putzi on how Frances Anne Rollin’s writings reveal the evolving meanings of New Year’s Day for Black women.
For the latest USIH book review, Chisomo Kalinga wrote about Neville Hoad’s Pandemic Genres: Imagining Politics in a Time of AIDS.
While for the Civil War Monitor, Evan C. Rothera reviewed Martha A. Sandweiss’s The Girl in the Middle: A Recovered History of the American West.
Newsletters and Blog Posts:
Gonna end with a bunch of great newsletters & blog posts as usual, including Felicia Kornbluh for her History Teaches… on what Renee Nicole Good reminds us about demonizing white female “gender & race traitors”
For his Systematic Hatreds newsletter, Paul Musgrave wrote about how the Trump administration has killed the old world order of unipolarity.
Over at his newsletter, Paul Krugman wrote about the hugely dangerous reality of Trump’s increasing descent into sundowning.
While for his Democracy Americana newsletter, Thomas Zimmer offered informed hope on the limits of violent authoritarianism.
Speaking of that violent authoritarianism, I appreciate The UnPopulist resharing part one of Greg Sargent’s vital essay on Stephen Miller’s assault on America’s immigrant legacy.
& for a hopeful perspective on fresh young political voice, here’s Mark Ehlers for his blog on the Texas Senate candidate James Talarico.
Turning to historical subjects, for his latest Work in Progress piece for his Campaign Trails newsletter, Kevin M. Kruse wrote about resignations as resistance in the Nixon, Reagan, & George W. Bush administrations.
Over at her History in the Margins blog, Pamela D. Toler highlighted the fascinating history & legacy of Madame Demorest’s fashion & media empire in 19C NYC.
While the latest installment of Sarah E. Bond’s Pasts Imperfect newsletter features Inger N.I. Kuin on the stakes of studying ancient philosophy.
Over at her Imperfect Union newsletter, Lindsay M. Chervinsky shared some fun recent research finds, including very cool historical maps.
I really appreciate Matthew Teutsch sharing & discussing his new Early American Literature course syllabus on his Interminable Rambling Medium page.
Over at his The Tenure Track newsletter, Etienne Toussaint shared part two of his series on building a scholarly writing pipeline that works.
While for her Love Notes newsletter, Jenn M. Jackson wrote about the challenges & opportunities of writing memoir.
& for his A Word About… newsletter, Benjamin Dreyer wrote about the Middle English origins of “fiery,” words he’s encountering in an early 20C play, & more.
I’ll end with a few great cultural studies pieces as ever, including Michael Azerrad for his newsletter on Kurt Cobain, Lead Belly, & the greatest song that Cobain never sang.
For a delightful Bright Wall/Dark Room Extras column, Frank Falisi wrote about The Name of the Rose & the mystery of faith.
& for her latest Review Roulette newsletter, my wife Vaughn Joy offered vital reflections on solidarity, community, & activism through the lens of Dear God.
Can’t get enough great public scholarly writing? Check out Bunk History’s collection of 40 of their favorite pieces of short-form history writing from 2025.
PS. I’m sure I missed plenty as ever, so please share more writing, podcasts, new & forthcoming books below. Thanks, & happy & warm reading, listening, & learning, all!
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