For this holiday weekend, here’s the mother of all #ScholarSunday threads, my epic 275th of public scholarly writing, podcast episodes, new & forthcoming books from the past week. Add more below, share as widely as possible, & enjoy, all!
A couple preliminary notes before we get going. First, make sure to check out yesterday’s meta-thread if you haven’t already, featuring reflections on public scholarship from my work compiling these 275 threads over nearly 6 years (& in conversation with David M. Perry’s new book The Public Scholar)!
Second, congrats to Mike Jamison, host of the excellent Pop Culture Basement podcast, for finding last week’s Force-ful Easter Egg first! The holiday & meta-thread mean no new Easter Egg hunt this week, but it’ll return next week, & in greater numbers.
Articles:
Starting with a piece for the week’s other holiday, Jordan Smith for History.com on the surprising origins & history of Cinco de Mayo.
For a fascinating Mother’s Day context, the folks at NiCHE Canada launched their “Mobilizing Motherhood” series with Emma Schroeder on the Voice of Women’s anti-nuclear activism.
For the ongoing 250th commemorations, Meghan Smith of Boston’s WGBH talked with Cassandra Good & Sara Georgini about Abigail Adams’ famous “Remember the ladies” letter.
While Karin Wulf wrote for Smithsonian magazine about Paul Revere’s forgotten race to secure documents & how government records helped win the Revolution.
Lots of other great public scholarly article this week as well, including Maya Conners for Nursing Clio’s Undergraduate Writing Series on a 1940s hydrogen peroxide experiment on infants in a Dublin hostel.
For the Architectural League of New York’s Urban Omnibus, Neta Bomani & Mariame Kaba contextualized the vital Black Zine Fair in the city’s lineage of Black independent publishing.
Two excellent pieces this week launching the Urban History Association’s Metropole’s Cities at Play series, including Alexandra Miller on New York’s turn of the century “play streets” & Maggie McNulty on the making of Denver’s contested I-70 Cover Park.
Fascinating Liberalism.org essay from Sarah Skwire on lessons for political theory & practice from Joe Hill’s new horror novel King Sorrow.
All week the Pittsburgh Review of Books has been sharing “Translation as an Intercultural Bridge,” a fascinating experiment in collective translation, featuring the work of Carnegie Mellon students in Sébastien Dubreil’s course (as well as Professor Dubreil’s thoughts) on an original text from Salomé Saqué. Here are Parts One, Two, Three, and Four.
I’m also looking forward to PRoB’s Summer Non-Beach Read Club’s series on Gertrude Stein’s The Making of Americans, which kicked off with this intro from Cecilia Konchar Farr.
Two contributions this week to the Journal of the Early Republic’s Panorama’s ongoing series on lessons for grad school (& really for all writers & public scholars), including Katherine Carper on experimenting with sustainable writing & Kevin March on redefining the PhD project.
& the American Historical Assocation’s Perspectives shared a number of moving In Memorium tributes this week, exemplified by Kevin M. Kruse’s piece on his late colleague Alison Isenberg.
Two open-access academic publications to share this week, including Lewis Johnson for Presidential Studies Quarterly on Thomas Dewey, the South, & the 1948 election.
& also open-access is Lewis Wade’s book chapter on the industrial risks of Franco-Asian commerce at the turn of the 18th century.
A handful of columns from Saturday Evening Post colleagues to share this week, including David Apatoff for the Art of the Post series on the frontier women of Harvey Dunn’s paintings.
For her Missing in History Post series, Nancy Rubin Stuart wrote about Margaret Knight, the 19th-century inventor known as “Lady Edison.”
For her Women’s Work series, Tanya Roth offered a Mother’s Day tribute to the Gold Star mothers who crossed the ocean.
Andrew Rihn shared a fascinating Post column on how Ernest Hemingway’s early short story “The Battler” changed the salad dressing industry forever.
& finally for the Post, here’s Kristine Esser Slentz’s historical, cultural, & culinary ode to the oyster.
Current Events:
Turning to current events writing from the week, vital Texas Monthly essay from Robert Downen on the sexual abuse allegations against influential Southern Baptist Convention leader Paul Pressler. & congrats to Texas Monthly editor Aaron Parsley for winning a Pulitzer this week for his August 2025 firsthand account of the Texas floods.
For Western Edge, Leah Sottile shared a bracing & powerful essay based on her observations of the students in Seth Cotlar’s course on the Far Right in America, 1920-2020.
Equally bracing & important is Alan Elrod’s Liberal Currents essay on the parasocial stye in American culture & politics.
While Steven L. Taylor wrote for Liberal Currents on three key lessons from our ongoing & worsening redistricting wars.
Speaking of those redistricting wars, here’s Madiba K. Dennie for Balls and Strikes on how the Callais decision rewrote the Constitution as well as gutting the Voting Rights Act.
While Noah Berlatsky wrote for Public Notice on how Democrats can avenge the death of the VRA (an even more important goal after the frustrating VA Supreme Court decision).
For Good Authority, Eric Gonzalez Juenke wondered whether there will ever be comprehensive immigration reform in the US.
For our moment’s direct contrasts to such reform, here’s Michael Phillips for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram on how the city needs to support fans worried about ICE.
Gonna end this section with three models of resistance, including Thomas E. Ricks in Liberal Currents on lessons in training, strategy, & discipline from the Civil Rights Movement.
Jacob T. Levy wrote for Liberalism.org on how sometimes liberal neutrality & defending political norms requires playing hardball.
& the leaders of the U.S. Climate Action Network wrote in Mother Jones on lessons from young leaders for what a winning climate movement looks like.
Podcasts:
Lots of great podcast episodes to share, including E440 of Liz Covart’s Ben Franklin’s World, featuring Brooke Newman on Jefferson’s cut Declaration grievance & the British monarchy’s role in slavery.
The latest episode of Kelly Therese Pollock’s Unsung History podcast features Gautham Rao on policing slavery & Black rebellion in the American South.
The Norton Library Podcast has started a new series on Uncle Tom’s Cabin, kicked off by a conversation with the new edition’s editor Susan M. Ryan on contexts for the novel & Stowe.
While for their War of the Rebellion podcast, Niels Eichhorn & Andrew Houck welcomed Isadora Moura Mota to discuss her book Freedom’s Horizon: Black Abolitionism in Nineteenth-Century Brazil.
Over at the Black Studies Podcast, hosts Ashley Newby & John E. Drabinski were joined by andré carrington to discuss the expansiveness of the Black Studies imagination, teaching Black life in times of political crisis, & more.
For the latest episode of her Civics & Coffee podcast, Alycia Asai discussed the 1880 Mussel Slough Tragedy & the fight over land in late 19th century California.
Two new episodes of Liam Heffernan’s America: The Story of the USA podcast this week, including a conversation about Amelia Earhart with her biographer Rachel Hartigan & a discussion of Trump’s attacks on education with Kate Ballantyne.
Over at Matt Gabriele’s American Medieval podcast, he welcomed Reed O’Mara & Loren Cantrell to discuss the multicultural Middle Ages, then & now.
Shannon McSheffrey joined the That Shakespeare Life podcast to discuss 1517’s Evil May Day, immigration riots, & the real Thomas More.
While for Past, Present, & Future’s History of Ideas podcast, host David Runciman interviewed Robert Saunders about the 100th anniversary of Britain’s one & only general strike.
For The Nation’s podcast, hosts Matt DaSilva & Aaron Regunberg interviewed Eric Rauchway about lessons from the OG antifascist, FDR.
For the other end of the spectrum, Stephen F. Knott joined Axelbanks Reports History & Today to discuss his book Conspirator in Chief: The Long Tradition of Conspiracy Theories in the American Presidency.
Continuing with that thread & turning to current events conversations, for the latest episode of their This Ain’t It podcast Melissa & Matthew Teutsch discussed what happens when attempted assassinations & political violence stop shocking us.
For the New Books Network, host Stephen Satkiewicz interviewed Siniša Malešević about her book Nationalism as a Way of Life: The Rise & Transformation of Modern Subjectivities.
For episode 4 of his Dreaming Against the Machine podcast, Adam Becker was joined by Dave Karpf to discuss examples of reactionary futurism.
For the latest episode of the Future Knowledge podcast, Luca Messarra, Chris Freeland, & Katie Livingston discuss Vanishing Culture, their collection about the loss of cultural records in the digital age.
Episode 2 of Micah Loewinger’s WNYC podcast American Emergency is now out, focused on FEMA’s response to Hurricane Katrina. & Micah also talked about that project over at the Science Friday podcast with host Flora Lichtman.
Daniel Laurison joined Karen Jagoda’s Digital Politics podcast to discuss connecting with disengaged working-class & low-income voters.
While Robert Kuttner joined Micah Sifry’s This Old Democracy podcast to discuss what happens when we win the arguments but lose the politics.
Speaking of frustrating losses, Kimberlé W. Crenshaw joined Mary Harris on Slate’s What’s Next podcast to discuss the Voting Rights Act, the backlash to her ideas about race & intersectionality, & much more.
On a similar note, for their The Oath & the Office podcast John Fugelsang & Corey Brettschneider interviewed Kate Shaw about the Supreme Court’s assault on our rights.
I already highlighted David M. Perry’s new book The Public Scholar above, & he joined Kate Carpenter’s Drafting the Past this week to discuss it, advice for op eds, & much more. Also check out this Pittsburgh Review of Books excerpt!
For what looks to be a fascinating forthcoming podcast, check out Emily J. Edwards’ Silver Screen Sleuths!
& I’m really proud of the Seventh Inning, the latest episode of my Diamond in the Rough: Baseball, Bigotry, & the Battle for America, season two, which focuses on famous games, defining victories & losses, & overarching questions of why we do this work.
Books:
First, thanks to Bluesky user @purpletiger (Katherine Yngve) for sharing a recent publication I missed, Michael Brownstein, Alex Madva, & Daniel Kelly’s Somebody Should Do Something: How Anyone Can Help Create Social Change, out now from MIT Press.
A handful of important new books out this week, including in a similar vein Brittany Lewis’s Building a New Table: A Community-Centered Handbook for Transformative Social Change from University of Minnesota Press.
Also published this week is Russell Rickford’s A Proxy Africa: Guyana, African Americans, & the Radical 1970s from UNC Press.
Out this week from Oxford University Press is Anthony Kaldellis’s 1453: The Conquest & Tragedy of Constantinople.
Likewise newly published is Maya Weeks’s Myth of the Garbage Patch from THOUSANDS press, which confronts marine plastic pollution from an anticolonial feminist perspective.
& out this week from HarperCollins is Patrick Wyman’s Lost Worlds: How Humans Tried, Failed, Succeeded, & Built Our World.
For an article on another important new publication, check out Rory Carroll in The Guardian on Tom Hulme’s Belfastmen: An Intimate History of Life Before Gay Liberation.
& now out from Springer Nature is Henry Bartholomew, Joan Passey, & Jen Baker’s edited collection New Directions in the Ghost Story, Volume 1.
Forthcoming next Friday (May 15) from Oxford is Christopher Hodson & Brett Rushforth’s Beyond the Ocean: France & the Atlantic World from the Crusades to the Age of Revolutions.
Out the following Tuesday (May 19) from MIT Press is Edward Jones-Imhotep’s The Broken Machine: Histories of Technology, Social Order, & the Self.
Forthcoming on June 16 from HarperCollins is Sarah J. Jackson’s A Second Sight: How the Wonder & Vision of Black Mediamakers Push America Towards Freedom.
& out in November & now available for pre-order is Kelly L. Marino’s Daughters of Democracy: The Post-Suffrage Women’s Movement, Youth Activism, & American Campuses Between the Wars from Cambridge University Press.
Available open-access through today (May 10) at the Oxford UP site is the Introduction to Anna O. Law’s Migration & the Origins of American Citizenship: African Americans, Native Americans, & Immigrants.
For an excerpt from another new book, here’s Dylan Gottlieb in The New York Times (that’s a gift link) from his Yuppies: The Bankers, Lawyers, Joggers, & Gourmands Who Conquered New York.
While LitHub shared an excerpt from Sara Nović’s new memoir on hiding her deafness in plain sight, Mother Tongue.
& over at the Columbia Journalism Review, Susie Banikarim interviewed Tracy Clark-Flory about her new memoir My Mother’s Daughter: Finding Myself in My Family’s Fractured Past.
For the latest USIH book review, A.J. Bauer wrote about David Austin Walsh’s Taking America Back: The Conservative Movement & the Far Right.
Over at the New Yorker, Daniel Immerwahr linked a pair of revisionist recent takes on the Revolution, Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy & Trevor Burnard’s Republic and Empire & Sarah Pearsall’s Freedom Round the Globe.
For Public Books, Roxanne Panchasi reviewed Zoe B. Wallbrook’s academic murder mystery, History Lessons.
& over at Publishers Weekly, Cathy Lynn Grossman highlighted a collection of forthcoming books in religious studies that call on readers to resist.
Black Perspectives:
The folks at AAIHS’s Black Perspectives are in the midst of their latest roundtable, this one featuring Global Black Thought articles inspired by Kali Nicole Gross’s Vengeance Feminism: The Power of Black Women’s Fury in Lawless Times. The roundtable started with Antoinette Burton on vengeance feminism as “loving correction”; continued with Cheryl D. Hicks on Black women fighting back Philadelphia style; included Sophia Evangeline Gumbs on honor, fury, & reproductive retribution; featured Tracey Johnson on Black women’s criminalization, sexual exploitation, & dehumanization; & concluded for the week (but it continues next week) with Jenn M. Jackson on Black women’s feminism in lawless times.
Newsletters and Blog Posts:
Speaking of Jenn M. Jackson, over at her Love Notes newsletter she offered her 16th Black Feminist Book Club, this one focused on Mikki Kendall’s Hood Feminism.
Gonna end with a bunch of great newsletters & blog posts as usual, including Felicia Kornbluh for her History Teaches… on two court decisions on reproductive rights & equality. Kornbluh also shared those thoughts over at the American Prospect.
For his Fool’s Gold newsletter, Donald Earl Colllins wrote about the indefensible behaviors & detestable people that too many folks are willing to defend.
Over at the Fight the Fire newsletter, Sam Bellamy argued that we need Smedley Butler’s “War is a Racket” now more than ever.
For his newsletter, Paul Thomas traced how media reliance on free-market think tank reports is distorting the story of reading in the US.
Over at Public Notice, Tom Schaller highlighted how Trump is trying to turn the whole nation into a tacky branded property.
While for The Unpopulist, Andy Craig argued that Constitutional Amendments to stop our descent into authoritarianism are doable & necessary.
At his Democracy Americana newsletter, Thomas Zimmer has started a new series on our fragile multiracial democracy, beginning with a post on lessons from Reconstruction.
Continuing with such historical subjects, for his Civil War Memory newsletter Kevin M. Levin wrote about how the Confederacy’s secret weapon was its enslaved laborers. & Levin also shared some takeaways from his first public presentation of his next project, on such enslaved laborers at Gettysburg.
For the latest installment of the In Pursuit newsletter, Michael David Cohen wrote about Zachary Taylor & leaders choosing between public duty & private convictions.
For her monthly Civics & Coffee newsletter, Alycia Asai wrote about the 1873 trial of Susan B. Anthony.
Over at her History in the Margins blog, Pamela D. Toler told the fascinating story of the Radar Girls, the Women’s Air Raid Defense of the Hawaiian Islands.
The latest installment of Sarah E. Bond’s Pasts Imperfect newsletter features high school classicist Max J. Foa on experiential learning beyond the classroom.
For his blog, Darcy Moore wrote about Blair’s Hut, George Orwell’s great-grandparents, & the invention of the Romantic Alps.
Over at her Strange & Wondrous newsletter, Surekha Davies wrote about modern medicine’s global origins in the TB epidemic.
At her blog, Theresa Kaminski offered her 15th Dispatch from the Writing Life, this one discussing primary & secondary sources.
For his Freedom Papers newsletter, Etienne Toussaint wrote about Langston Hughes & not deferring our writing dreams.
While for the May 2nd installment of her Letters from an American newsletter, Heather Cox Richardson took a break from our fraught moment to share a delightful Kentucky Derby-inspired piece on ten famous American horses.
Gonna end with a bunch of great cultural studies pieces as usual, including Julia Carrie Wong in Th Guardian on how Woody Guthrie’s protest anthems are striking a chord with new generations.
For her Shy Museumgoer blog, Diane Tucker wrote the mysteries & allures of 19th century “nocturnes.”
Over at Movieweb, Chris Yogerst shared a list of 9 great thriller action films made by auteur directors.
One of those is First Blood, which is also featured in Verbum Libere’s piece on how Hollywood films in the Cold War were examples of soft power.
For RogerEbert.com, Alisha Mughal wrote about how the 1947 novel & 1950 film In a Lonely Place together changed noir’s direction.
For Bright Wall/Dark Room’s ongoing Comedy issue, Travis Woods wrote about the gatorskin noir & satirical softcore of Wild Things.
Over at his Academic Bubble newsletter, Dion Georgiou argued that Passport to Pimlico became a cornerstone for how Ealing Studios produced bodies of work.
& finally, for her latest Review Roulette newsletter Vaughn Joy offered a Cinco de Mayo special post on La Bamba.
PS. I’m sure I missed plenty as ever, so please add more public scholarly goodness below. Thanks, happy reading, listening, & learning, & may it be a restful & delightful Mother’s Day for all who celebrate (& Sunday for everyone)!
Leave a Reply