From Nashville for one more Family Weekend, here’s my 242nd #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 reminder that my wife & I will soon (imminently, in fact!) be launching our own website, which will host these threads, our public scholarship, & more, including opportunities for y’all for sure. Watch this space!
Starting with some favorites from the week as ever, including Jody DiPerna for As the Crow Flies on the wonderful tradition of the cookie table & baking as mutual aid:
Pablo Leon contributed a wonderful guest post for the School Library Journal’s Teen Librarian Toolbox on how YA lit can help break through historical silences:
Vital New Yorker essay from Beth Lew-Williams on the too-often frustrating ritual of civic apologies for anti-Chinese exclusion:
Thanks to Kidada E. Williams for sharing Dan Freedman’s excellent Moment magazine article on the Black Press’s solidarity with Jews against the Nazis:
& check out this excellent report for the Longfellow House-Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site on Black history at the estate (created by Caitlin DeAngelis & colleagues):
Lots more great public scholarly writing this week, including Patrick Walsh for the Dublin Review of Books on Trinity College Dublin’s forgotten tenantry histories:
Here’s Naomi Baker for The Conversation on Anne Wentworth, the groundbreaking 17th-century English woman who wrote about surviving domestic abuse:
Compelling work as ever from Danny Robb for JSTOR Daily, this time on how cave exploration became complicit in problematic European nationalisms:
A trio of great pieces for the AHA’s Perspectives blog this week, including Hilary N. Green concluding their summer National Parks series with a piece on the frustratingly uncertain future of the great NPS Historic Resource Studies:
The latest AHA Member Spotlight focuses on Br. Dr. Ken Homan SJ, a historian of religion, labor, racial justice, & more:
& Elizabeth George wrote for Perspectives on an in-class assignment that can provide immediate feedback & learning for students:
That’s one of a few pedagogy pieces this week as the new semester gets rolling, including Shannan Mason for The Journal of the Early Republic’s Panorama blog on a lesson plan for teaching women in Revolutionary America:
& David Trowbridge wrote for the History News Network on a pedagogical tool that doubles as a travel app to help get people hooked on history:
A trio of pieces from Saturday Evening Post colleagues to share this week, including Cable Neuhaus making the case for resisting our national emphases on “working hard”:
Selina Alipour Tabrizi used the frustrating case of Millie Bobby Brown’s debut novel to consider whether ghostwriting is ethical:
& for her Common Threads column, Einav Rabinovitch-Fox wrote about clothing labels’ role in the fights for unions & workers’ rights:
Turning to current events, Vaughn Joy wrote a must-read piece for Clio and the Contemporary on the attacks on Hollywood & academia as examples of modern McCarthyism:
Speaking of Vaughn, also check out her excellent, complementary Bluesky thread on folks who came to regret “naming names” fo/r HUAC:
Ta-Nehisi Coates is back with a banger of a Vanity Fair essay on how the Right have found a new Lost Cause in their whitewashing of Charlie Kirk’s legacy:
Important 19th News reporting from Jasmine Mithani on Cynthia Miller-Idriss’s new book & the need to address sexism if we’re going to stop political violence:
Zeena Bany Hamdan wrote for Africa is a Country on how AI is contributing to the potential demise of curiosity & wonder:
Great Bloomberg City Lab article from Jarrett Walker on why cutting public transportation has hidden costs for American communities:
Hugely important conversation with five historians on what the Trump administration’s defunding of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars would mean:
Vital ProPublica piece from Adriana Loureiro Fernández on what she has witnessed while photographing the disappearances & homecomings of her Venezuelan countrymen:
& I’ll end this section with two excellent new public scholarly resources, including Austin Kocher & the Deportation Data Project’s new Immigration Enforcement Dashboard:
& thanks to Walter D. Greason for sharing the bracing & moving Visiting Room Project, a collection of first-person testimonials from folks sentenced to life in prison without parole in Louisiana:
Speaking of Walter, he also shared this thread of videos, images, & ideas from the Future Waves conference:
Lots of great new podcast episodes this week, including the latest Massachusetts Historical Society Historians & Their Histories, with guest host Megan Kate Nelson interviewing Manisha Sinha about her new book on Reconstruction & much more:
Speaking of Reconstruction, the latest episode of Alycia Asai’s Civics & Coffee focuses on Black women’s community care work during that era:
Episode 130 of the Jewish Women’s Archive podcast features Emily Nussbaum on groundbreaking TV figure Getrude Berg & her character Molly Goldberg, America’s first TV mom:
The latest episode of Liam Heffernan’s America: A History features Peter Mancall on the stories & legacies of the Mayflower:
For the long-awaited return of Waitman Beorn’s Holocaust History podcast, he interviewed Erin McGlothlin on writing about Holocaust perpetrators:
For the third episode of their This Ain’t It podcast, Melissa & Matthew Teutsch discussed why & how words matter, from Scripture to social media:
Turning to current events conversations, check out Stephanie G. Wilson’s latest Freedom Over Fascism live video, a chat with Kevin M. Levin on the attempts to erase history:
Here’s the final episode of Ciara Torres-Spelliscy’s vital Democracy & Destiny podcast, featuring Public Citizen’s Lisa Gilbert:
For the latest episode of their The Oath & the Office podcast, John Fugelsang & Corey Brettschneider discussed how Trump is turning Charlie Kirk’s murder into a weapon:
& check out Heather Cox Richardson’s latest vital American Conversation, a chat with former Senator Doug Jones on the 1963 Birmingham church bombing & its legacies & lessons for us today:
Two new pieces for Time’s Made By History blog this week, including Kristin O’Brassill-Kulfan on the dark histories behind Trump’s war on “vagrancy”:
& Peter C. Kunze wrote for Made By History on The Golden Girls’ groundbreaking creator Susan Harris for the show’s 40th anniversary:
A couple of important new scholarly book publications to share this week, including Patty Krawec’s Bad Indians Book Club: Reading at the Edge of a Thousand Worlds from Broadleaf Books:
Also out this week is Michael D. Dwyer’s Tinsel & Rust: How Hollywood Manufactured the Rust Belt from Oxford University Press:
Out for a few weeks now but new to these threads is Jenifer L. Barclay & Stefanie Hunt-Kennedy’s edited collection Cripping the Archive: Disability, History, & Power from University of Illinois Press:
Forthcoming & available for pre-order from De Gruyter Brill (& now check out that snazzy cover!) is Vaughn Joy’s Selling Out Santa: Hollywood Christmas Films in the Age of McCarthy:
Also forthcoming is Thomas Crow’s Murder in the Rue Marat: A Case of Art in Revolution from Princeton University Press:
& for an excerpt from another forthcoming book, here’s Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado for the Bloomsbury blog from his Taco:
For Oxford American magazine, Christian Leus interviewed Rhiannon Giddens & Kristina Gaddy about their new book Go Back & Fetch It: Recovering Early Black Music in the Americas for Fiddle & Banjo from UNC Press:
While for Phenomenal World, Kim Phillips-Fein interviewed Daniel Wortel-London about his new book The Menace of Prosperity: New York City & the Struggle for Economic Development, 1865-1981 from University of Chicago Press:
For The Atlantic, Danielle Amir Jackson reviewed Lindsey Stewart’s new book The Conjuring of America: Mojos, Mermaids, Medicine, & 400 Years of Black Women’s Magic:
For the latest USIH book review, Fraser Livingston wrote about Joshua Nygren’s The State of Conservation: Rural America & the Conservation-Industrial Complex since 1920:
For more book recommendations, I really enjoyed Mark J. Ehlers for his blog on how fiction has helped him discover Appalachian stories & communities:
& for the latest installment of Jenn M. Jackson’s Black Feminist Book Club, she discussed Kali Nicole Gross’s Vengeance Feminism: The Power of Black Women’s Fury in Lawless Times:
Gonna end with lots of great newsletters & blog posts as usual, including Karen Attiah for The Golden Hour on her firing from the Washington Post & how her work continues:
For Public Notice, Noah Berlatsky wrote about how the Right’s response to the Charlie Kirk assassination is about repression, not free speech:
For his Campaign Trails newsletter, Kevin Kruse linked these current conversations to the ways in which White Citizens’ Councils were sanitized through the lens of “civility”:
For his Rearview Mirror newsletter, Charles S. Maier contextualized this assassination through historical parallels to Weimar Germany & many other nations:
& for his website, Philip Bump wrote about how the word “they” can serve as a vehicle for extremist propaganda:
Kevin M. Levin’s Civil War Memory is always a must-read, including this piece on how he learned to leave behind the “Noble Dream” of historical objectivity:
Two great new pieces from Bram Hubbell for his Liberating Narratives site this week, including this one on teaching global feminism in World History classes:
& Bram followed that up with a piece on teaching global feminism in the Age of Revolutions:
For his The Blog is Coming from INSIDE the HOUSE! newsletter, Christian Warren wrote about why “surveillance” is not a dirty word when it comes to effective public health:
For her History in the Margins blog, here’s Pamela D. Toler on what she learned about Japanese American women’s contributions to WWII at the Fort Snelling historic site:
Over at Ideas Roadshow they’re continuing their fascinating series on the groundbreaking 16th-century painter Sofonisba Anguissola:
For the Face Ache newsletter, here’s Adrian Teal on how 18th-century cartoonists cashed in on a kinky crime wave:
& for his The Tenure Track newsletter, Etienne Toussaint wrote about how we can discover the threads of our essential scholarly identities:
Gonna conclude with vital cultural studies pieces as usual, including Maureen Ryan for her Something Mo site on Rolling Stone’s firing of the great TV critic Alan Sepinwall & how we must try to de-stupid the media:
For his Interminable Rambling Medium column, Matthew Teutsch wrote about EC Comics’ groundbreaking 1952 work “The Monsters”:
For his Gravity is Gone blog, Dave Levitan wrote about Robert Redford’s environmentalism & why his 1970s The Solar Film is the most prescient movie ever:
Speaking of Redford, check out Vaughn Joy’s latest installment of her Review Roulette newsletter, a wonderful review of The Sting that’s also an impassioned plea for cultural studies in our moment:
& Dion Georgiou shared his forthcoming Law and Humanities article on classical jurisprudence, politics, & patriarchy in the film A Family Affair:
Speaking of Dion, if you need more awesome public scholarship (& who doesn’t these days?), check out the latest Stop, Look, & Listen compilation for his Academic Bubble newsletter:
PS. I’m sure I missed plenty as ever, so please share more public scholarly writing & work, podcasts, new & forthcoming books below. Thanks, & happy reading, listening, & learning, all!
Leave a Reply