As promised, here’s a year-end #ScholarSunday thread featuring some of the best public scholarly writing & work, podcast episodes, new books, & more from throughout 2025. I really appreciate folks who shared work, their own & that of others, for this meta-thread!
Before I get into it, let’s be clear: this is just the tip of the iceberg of all the amazing work that’s been done throughout the year. That’s why I create the threads each week, all of which you can find on this Google Doc, & which have included countless excellent examples of all those types of work.
That doc includes previous threads from Twitter & ones from Substack, but since September & going forward they’re hosted on our new website Black & White & Read All Over. I’m very proud of that site & all that my wife Vaughn Joy has done with it, & hope you’ll subscribe, as it’s a great embodiment of what independent public scholarship & community can be here in 2025.
Again, what follows here is just a handful of stellar examples of all of the great work from across the year, so please share more—more writing, more podcasts, more books, more public scholarship of all kinds—in comments below, & help get all the work to all the folks!
Scholars:
With those things said, here’s a special #ScholarSunday best-of-2025 thread! Starting with five individual public scholars (presented in alphabetical order) who reached out to share a ton of their great work from across the year:
- Surekha Davies published an important book this year, Humans: A Monstrous History (University of California Press). Her newsletter Strange and Wondrous: Notes from a Science Historian is always worth checking out, but she specifically highlighted this November 27th installment on Del Toro’s Frankenstein. And she likewise passed along two examples of her many other vital columns from across the year: this one from the LA Times in June on our monstrous immigration policies; & this one from Smithsonian magazine in October on a monstrous 16th-century painting that has a great deal to tell us about world history.
- Kerry Dexter has an excellent newsletter as well, Along the Music Road, & shared this installment of her Sunday Sessions series featuring “We’ve Come a Long Way To Be Together” from the late great Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon. That late 2024 newsletter is open to all readers; this one from May 2025 on protest songs & this one from June 2025 on the songwriter & activist Carolyn Hester are available to subscribers, which y’all should definitely consider becoming if you’re not already. & Kerry also shared a couple great 2025 pieces from elsewhere on the web: this one from her Music Road blog on the Darwin Song Project that brought together eight songwriters & a scientist; & this one for Perceptive Travel on four ideas for winter travel adventures.
- Walter D. Greason (also known as Sage Gray) is a longtime public scholarly friend & collaborator, not just on these threads but with all the work we’re both trying to do. Everything he writes & works on is well worth your time, but he shared three particular items from what’s been a very busy and productive year: this April appearance on Jennifer van Alstyne’s The Social Academic podcast alongside his artistic collaborator Tim Fielder discussing their groundbreaking book The Graphic History of Hip Hop; this October post for his Genius Locus website on throughlines across his groundbreaking publications & public work this year & beyond; & this Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder column from November on how Black Minnesota has been & remains a source of global inspiration.
- Zeb Larson is a freelance journalist & public scholar doing the difficult & vital work of bringing together our most current events with their contexts across history, culture, and academia. Among his many excellent pieces this year, he specifically highlighted two: this August column for Truthdig on how the Trump administration’s mental health policies echo some of the worst of the 19th century; & this essay for Jacobin magazine’s Winter issue on why we need a return of the kinds of leftist crime fiction that defined much of the 20th century. He also shared the Resistant Communiqués public scholarly activist podcast, on which he is a frequent co-host.
- Brandy Schillace published a vital book this year, her The Intermediaries: A Weimar Story (W.W. Norton). She also hosts multiple podcasts & digital communities that share great books & work from so many talented folks, about which you can learn a lot more on her website. & she reached out to share two of her many great pieces of writing from the year: this January essay for her Medium column The Quantastic Journal that foreshadowed the frustrating return of infectious disease epidemics under RFK Jr. et al; & this May Boston Globe column (paywalled but well worth subscribing for) on the under-remembered transgender pioneer Dora Richter.
Articles:
Turning to individual pieces of exemplary public scholarly writing from across the year, my Saturday Evening Post colleague Tanya Roth wrote for her Women’s Work column in January about the important public health work of the last Queens of Hawaii.
Alyssa Goldstein Sepinwall wrote a movingly personal as well as scholarly essay for American Anthropologist in March on how our immigration policies finally began to live up to our promises to welcome migrants with dignity—until they didn’t.
For his excellent Radical Scholarship site, P.L. Thomas shared this July post to accompany & expand upon his Washington Post article (paywalled but worth seeking out in full for sure) on why narratives of a “literacy crisis” in the U.S. are inaccurate & destructive.
In September, Alondra Nelson published this open-access Science magazine article on how AI’s most prominent failures are only the beginning of the problems with this dangerous new technology.
Also in September, Miami University of Ohio’s Stories feature highlighted the work of alumnus Leanna Renee Hieber—in her co-written book America’s Most Gothic: Haunted History Stranger Than Fiction & elsewhere—to share ghost stories like that of educational pioneer Helen Peabody.
In October, Einav Rabinovitch-Fox wrote a guest column for The Guardian on how to identify & resist the not-so secret language of fascist fashion.
In November, Mary M. Burke wrote for the Irish publication RTE on the historic New York Mayor who was even younger than Zohran Mamdani, the early 20th century Irish American politician John Purroy Mitchel.
Also in November, the retired librarian behind the Buffalo Research site published a delightful, very comprehensive timeline of chicken wings in Buffalo from 1855 to the present, based entirely on fully-cited primary sources.
For lots more great public scholarly writing from across the year, check out these compilations:
- Contingent magazine’s annual list of journal articles from scholars outside the tenure track;
- The year’s most-read articles on the AHA’s Perspectives blog;
- & this Bluesky thread featuring the Journal of Southern History’s 2025 issues & articles.
Podcasts:
Thanks to the folks who reached out to highlight individual podcast episodes from across the year well worth checking out, including Ross Lennon sharing his History on Film podcast’s January episode featuring acclaimed historian Robert Rosenstone on working with Warren Beatty on Reds & much more.
Christina Gessler shared this May episode of her The Academic Life podcast, featuring Agnieszka Pasieka on her book Living Right: Far Right Youth Activists in Contemporary Europe.
Check out this August episode of the C19: America in the 19th Century podcast, featuring Mary Isbell on her search for solutions to the student reading crisis.
Thanks to Kerry Dexter for sharing two episodes of Shannon Heaton’s Irish Music Stories podcast: this one from a few years back on bird hunting & tunes; & this one from October 2025, part of Heaton’s “Sidequest” series inspired by her Perfect Maze album.
& just in time for the holidays, Sabrina Mittermeier & Torsken Kathke’s In Front of Ira podcast is back with new episodes on Hanukkah films, Serendipity, & more!
Books:
Every weekly thread all year has featured at least a few important newly released books, so here I’ll highlight a trio from across 2025 that folks generously shared for this best-of thread:
- Oneya Fenell Okuwobi’s Who Pays for Diversity?: Why Programs Fail at Racial Equity & What To Do About It (March, University of California Press);
- Brandy Schillace’s The Intermediaries: A Weimar Story (May, W.W. Norton);
- & Maureen Ogle’s The Price of Plenty: A History of Meat in America (November, Blue Willow Books).
I can’t highlight books from 2025 without featuring my wife Vaughn Joy’s must-read first book, Selling Out Santa: Hollywood Christmas Films in the Age of McCarthy (November, De Gruyter Brill).
& for a ton more books to check out, here’s Contingent magazine’s annual list of books published by historians off the tenure track (& here’s the complementary list for literary scholars).
Newsletters and Blog Posts:
Ditto with the many excellent newsletters & blog posts that I’ve featured in each #ScholarSunday thread all year; most of those publications will continue into the new year & are well worth subscribing to so you never miss new writing.
Here I’ll just share a thoughtful & moving year-end piece, A.R. Moxon’s “Goodbye to 2025” installment of their The Reframe newsletter.
& finally, two wrap-up pieces from me: over at my AmericanStudier blog (now featured on our aforementioned Black & White & Read All Over website), this week I’m sharing posts in my annual Year in Review series; and for my latest Saturday Evening Post Considering History column I offer American Studies contexts for 10 of the biggest events and trends of the first quarter of the 21st century!
PS. Thanks again to folks who shared these nominations for this special best-of-2025 thread! I hope you’ll add a ton more in all these categories & beyond in comments below, & make sure to keep sharing new work as the threads continue this coming Sunday & throughout 2026!
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