I’m not gonna lie, there are times when compiling & sharing threads of public scholarship feels like an entirely inadequate task. & of course it’s far from the only way to resist & fight right now (or ever). But I believe it’s interconnected with the others, & it helps us understand why we’re here, what we’re fighting, & how we resist.
So amidst every damn thing, here, still & proudly, is my 258th #ScholarSunday thread of great public scholarly writing, podcast episodes, new & forthcoming books from the past week. Add more below, please share as widely as possible, & solidarity as la lucha continua, all!
Articles:
Starting with some favorite articles as usual, including a pair of great pieces for the Urban History Association’s Metropole blog’s January series Urban & Environmental Dialogues: Jaida Johnson on the sidewalk as an environmental threshold; & Claire Campbell on the cautionary tale of St. John West in the British colony of New Brunswick.
That Metropole series is in conjunction with the Network in Canadian History & Environment (NiCHE), which also featured this fascinating recent piece from Heather Green & Kaley MacMullin on finding Black Lung in the archives.
Over at the Journal of the Early Republic’s Panorama blog, Meagan Wierda wrote about the 1970 Census & why to be counted is to be considered.
For the AHA’s Perspective blog’s Everything Has a History series, David Farber wrote about the current conference’s setting of the Hilton Chicago.
Twenty years after his groundbreaking book on race relations in Dallas, Michael Phillips wrote for The Dallas Morning News on where things stand in early 2026.
Vital piece from Eben Levey for Clio & the Contemporary on what we can learn from the Progressive Era about the “Donroe Doctrine” & U.S. imperialism in Venezuela.
& speaking of the US & Latin America, check out Sam Holley-Kline’s open-access article in Comparative Studies in Society & History on the United Fruit Company & racialized labor in early 20C Guatemala.
Those early 20C imperial occupations are one of many historical contexts that I offered in my recent Saturday Evening Post Considering History column contextualizing 10 of the most significant events of the first quarter of the 21st century.
& this weekend, for the 250th anniversary of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, my latest Considering History column considers how that pamphlet can help us better remember both Loyalists & the true fight at the heart of the American Revolution.
Current Events:
Turning to current events public scholarship but continuing with the imperialism theme, here’s Jonathan M. Katz for The New Republic on how Trump is reviving those early 20C misadventures.
Zeb Larson wrote for DAME magazine on how this latest invasion & occupation extend our long history of deploying the military for oil & other corporate interests.
For Wired magazine’s The Big Story, Garrett M. Graff offered 3 keys for understanding Trump’s retro coup in Venezuela.
Over at WOSU Public Media, foreign policy expert Christopher McKnight Nichols was interviewed about putting this latest foreign policy controversy in historical context.
& speaking of Nichols, he also moderated this roundtable of UNC Press authors with expertise on the subject, including Michael Bustamante, Mateo Jarquín, Renata Keller, & Alan McPherson.
Finally on the subject of the new imperialism, I was honored to be quoted in Anton Nilsson’s article for Crikey on how Trump’s hemispheric talk has rubbed off on Australian media.
Turning to other current events public scholarship, I really appreciate Toby Buckle’s Liberal Currents article on why we need to get off the defensive about immigration & free movement.
For DAME magazine, Lux Alptraum wrote about how MAHA have co-opted feminist critiques of hormonal contraception & seized hold of the birth control conversation.
Important work from Billie Jean Sweeney for Assigned Media on how contempt is the foundation for the ongoing war on trans people & America.
Great essay from Marianne Dhenin for The Baffler on the many layers & meanings of the fight over history curricula.
& finally, from a few weeks back but new to these threads is Emmett Rensin for Boston Review on terrifying & telling case studies in AI psychosis.
Podcasts:
Lots of great new podcast episodes this week, but I’ll start with another important item I missed when it dropped, the New Books Network’s Ayisha Osori interviewing Howard W. French about his book The Second Emancipation: Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, & Global Blackness at High Tide.
For the first 2026 episode of Kate Carpenter’s Drafting the Past, she was joined by Jeff Roche to discuss his book Restructured Resistance: The Sibley Commission & the Politics of Desegregation in Georgia & finding his audiences.
Over at the Race & Regency podcast, the latest episode features Adrienne Childs on her book Ornamental Blackness: The Black Figure in European Decorative Arts & her new projects.
Episode 194 of Evan Axelbank’s Axelbank Reports History & Today features Richard Bell on his new book The American Revolution & the Fate of the World.
While episode 430 of Liz Covart’s Ben Franklin’s World features Sarah Naramore on the Founding Father of American medicine, Benjamin Rush.
Over at his Civil War Memory podcast, Kevin M. Levin interviewed Tom Zoellner about his new book The Road Was Full of Thorns: Running Toward Freedom in the American Civil War & how the enslaved changed the course of the war.
Alycia Asai continued her Civics & Coffee series on the Gilded Age with the first in a series on the period’s influential President, Rutherford B. Hayes.
The new episode of Josh Kluever & Kevin Mason’s Heartland History podcast is a roundtable on AIDS in the Midwest featuring Katie Batza & René Esparza.
Episode 248 of the AskHistorians podcast features Alex Wellerstein on his new book & President Truman’s fraught relationship with the atomic bombs.
While episode 69 of Waitman Beorn’s Holocaust History podcast features Doris Bergen on military chaplains & the Nazi regime.
On a similar note, the latest episode of Maxwell Kuzma’s Whiplash features Tyler Bieber on his new book about Fr. Tom Oddo, the late 20C Catholic priest who advocated for LGBTQ+ rights.
For a delightful new episode of Matt Gabriele’s American Medieval podcast, Ellen Arnold joined to discuss medieval penguins & the natural sciences in the Middle Ages.
Turning to current events conversations, for their The Oath & the Office podcast John Fugelsang & Corey Brettschneider focus on Trump’s Venezuela attack, Jack Smith’s testimony, & why Congress must act.
For more on Venezuela, check out the latest episode of Melissa & Matthew Teutsch’s This Ain’t It, on faith, power, & the cost of “strength.”
For more on Congress in these fraught times, check out Heather Cox Richardson’s two most recent American Conversations, with Senators Mark R. Warner & Chris Coons.
I’ll end with two very distinct but equally important & inspiring conversations, David O. Rotenstein interviewing community activist Sister Janet on 85 years of history in Covington, Kentucky.
& a very special live episode of Matt Seybold’s American Vandal podcast, a roundtable with Dominique Baker & Anna Kornbluh on theory at the higher ed bargaining table.
There’s even more public scholarly podcast goodness on the way, including the return of Liam Heffernan’s renamed & expanded America: The Story of the USA.
& check out the trailer for Contingent magazine’s upcoming podcast, which will debut in a few days with Vaughn Joy reading her excellent essay on Frankenstein.
Black Perspectives:
Just one piece for the AAIHS’s Black Perspectives this week, but it’s an important one, the announcement of the finalists for the Pauli Murray Book Prize in Black Intellectual History, featuring Ahmad Green-Hayes, Chloe L. Ireton, Leslie James, Jarvis C. McInnis, & Danielle Wiggins.
Books:
The folks at UNC Press published no fewer than three important new books this week, including Robert D. Bland’s Requiem for Reconstruction: Black Countermemory & the Legacy of the Lowcountry’s Lost Political Generation.
Also out from UNC this week is Sarah Jones Weicksel’sA Nation Unraveled: Clothing, Culture, & Violence in the American Civil War Era.
& finally from UNC Press this week, here’s Zackary A. Graham’s Crayfish, Crawfish, Crawdad: The Biology & Conservation of North America’s Favorite Crustaceans.
Speaking of UNC Press, over at their blog they announced two new journals from the UNC Department of Romance Studies, Hispanófila and Romance Notes.
Now out in hardcover (the e-book has been out for a few weeks) is Luisa Calè’s The Book Unbound: Material Cultures of Reading & Collecting, 1750-1850 from Cambridge University Press.
& I missed this recent release from Hobnob Press, Alex Craven’s Herriard: Records of Life & Work in a Hampshire Village.
Forthcoming January 27 from Harper Collins is Brooke N. Newman’s The Crown’s Silence: The Hidden History of the British Monarchy & Slavery in the Americas.
& forthcoming in April & now available for pre-order from Johns Hopkins University Press is David M. Perry’s The Public Scholar: A Practical Handbook.
For the latest USIH book review, Eric Ross wrote about Alex Wellerstein’s The Most Awful Responsibility: Truman & the Secret Struggle for Control of the Atomic Age.
While for Commonplace journal, Ethan Healey reviewed Lindsay M. Chervinsky’s Making the Presidency: John Adams & the Precedents That Forged the Republic.
& check out Holley Snaith’s timely piece for PBS’s American Masters on five defining works by the great Elie Wiesel.
Newsletters and Blog Posts:
I’ll end with some great newsletters & blog posts as ever, including Kevin M. Levin for his Civil War Memory on remembering & forgetting January 6th.
Charlotte Clymer wrote for Charlotte’s Web Thoughts on the extraordinary military career of (astronaut, politician, all-around badass) Mark Kelly.
William Kristol & colleagues wrote for The Bulwark on how we now have the king that Thomas Paine & his fellow Revolutionaries feared.
While Lindsay M. Chervinsky also wrote for her Imperfect Union newsletter on the 250th of Paine’s Common Sense.
Over at her History in the Margins blog, Pamela D. Toler highlighted Hubert Bancroft & his late 19th century “history factory.”
For her Strange & Wondrous: Notes from a Science Historian newsletter, Surekha Davies shared a few of her recent publications & upcoming events for Humans: A Monstrous History.
Important piece for the Ideas Roadshow’s Behind the Lens newsletter on art history & the importance of coming to your own conclusions.
For the Victoria County History London’s blog, Daisy Mansfield wrote about satire, stratification, & urbanization in William Hogarth’s London.
Over at her blog, author & historian Sue Wilkes shares her latest essay, for Jane Austen’s Regency World on steam-boats in Austen’s lifetime.
I’ll conclude with other great cultural studies pieces as ever, including a holiday newsletter I missed, Christian Warren on Tiny Tim, rickets, & the social determinants of health.
Thanks to Alyssa Sepinwall for sharing this open-access book chapter, Osvaldo Cleger on the politics of history in Assassin’s Creed: Freedom Cry.
I really enjoyed Kameron Hurley’s blog post on the Stranger Things finale, childhood abuse, & lessons for solidarity & community & solidarity in 2026.
& for latest excellent Review Roulette newsletter, here’s Vaughn Joy on Charade, Cary Grant’s oeuvre, & the gravitational pull of one of Hollywood’s strongest stars.
PS. I’m sure I missed plenty as ever, so please share more writing, podcasts, new & forthcoming books below. Thanks, happy reading, listening, & learning, & keep the faith, my friends.
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