#ScholarSunday Thread 188

Published on September 1, 2024

For your holiday weekend perusal, here’s my 188^th #ScholarSunday thread of great public scholarly writing, podcasts, new & forthcoming books from the last week. Share more below & enjoy, all!

Starting with a few favorite pieces from the week, including a beautiful essay from my Fitchburg State colleague Steve Edwards for LitHub:

https://lithub.com/as-a-writer-you-can-never-collect-too-many-endings/

Really enjoyed Jason Jacoby Lee’s first piece, for Zócalo Public Square:

https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2024/08/29/im-autistic-and-scared-of-your-dog/ideas/essay/

Great stuff from Bathsheba Demuth as always, this time for the new issue of Granta:

https://granta.com/where-the-language-changes/

Speaking of nature writing, check out this new publication from The Nature Conservancy, featuring my NeMLA colleague J. Indigo Eriksen & many others:

https://www.nature.org/en-us/about-us/where-we-work/united-states/virginia/stories-in-virginia/writing-the-land-va/

Asheesh Kapur Siddique wrote for the Yale University Press blog on the imperial origins of big data:

https://yalebooks.yale.edu/2024/08/28/the-imperial-origins-of-big-data/

Anya Jabour wrote for The Conversation on a groundbreaking 1920s survey & female sexuality:

https://theconversation.com/how-a-survey-of-over-2-000-women-in-the-1920s-changed-the-way-americans-thought-about-female-sexuality-236927

& check out this History Today interview with gender historian Lori D. Ginzberg:

https://www.historytoday.com/archive/interview/spot-lori-d-ginzberg

Lots of great new podcast episodes this week, including the latest Unsung History featuring Ted Pappas on hair & the American presidency:

https://www.unsunghistorypodcast.com/hair/

Congrats to the awesome Drafting the Past on reaching its 50^th episode, featuring oral historian Clara Bingham:

https://draftingthepast.com/podcast-episodes/episode-50-clara-bingham-lets-her-sources-speak-for-themselves/

For the New Books Network’s New Books in the American West, Stephen Hausmann interviewed Holly Miowak Guise on her Alaska Native Resilience from the University of Washington Press:

https://newbooksnetwork.com/alaska-native-resilience

For the latest episode of Freedom Over Fascism, Stephanie Wilson interviewed Blue Tent’s David Callahan on investing to build power:

Sustainable Bang for the Buck. David Callahan, Founder and Editor of Blue Tent on Investing to Build Power. Ep 63

& I’m so excited to share the trailer for my new podcast, The Celestials’ Last Game: Baseball, Bigotry, & the Battle for America. The First Inning drops later today, so watch this space!

https://americanstudier.podbean.com/e/trailer/

Four great columns for Time’s Made By History this week, including Whitney Nell Stewart on the history behind “Black jobs”:

https://time.com/7014769/history-michelle-obama-trump-black-jobs/

While Kyle Longley wrote for Made By History on the longstanding right-wing attacks on politicians’ military records:

https://time.com/7015638/tim-walz-jd-vance-military-records-max-cleland-history/

Here’s Mauricio Castro for Made By History on how Trump’s rhetoric on asylum echoes the Mariel Boatlift:

https://time.com/7006684/trump-asylum-mariel-history/

& finally for Made By History, Greg Eghigian wrote on the connections between UFO sightings & national security:

https://time.com/6996951/ufo-sighting-history-national-security/

I’m really enjoying the latest Black Perspectives roundtable on Beatriz Nascimento’s The Dialectic is in the Sea, kicked off by a two-part column from editor Carol Boyce Davies:

https://www.aaihs.org/a-creative-theoretical-immersion-into-black-radical-intellectual-thought-part-1/

Here’s part two of Davies’ introductory piece:

https://www.aaihs.org/a-creative-theoretical-immersion-into-black-radical-intellectual-thought-part-2/

The roundtable continued with Erica L. Williams on honoring Black women’s transnational intellectual production:

https://www.aaihs.org/honoring-black-womens-transnational-intellectual-production/

Daniela Gomes wrote for the roundtable on a practical & poetic approach to Afro-Brazilian resistance:

https://www.aaihs.org/a-practical-and-poetic-approach-to-afro-brazilian-resistance/

& Bryce Henson continued the roundtable with a column on the continuities of Nascimento’s Black radical thought:

https://www.aaihs.org/the-continuities-of-beatriz-nascimentos-black-radical-thought/

Couple important new books out this week, including Josh Eyler’s long-awaited Failing Our Future: How Grades Harm Students, and What We Can Do About It, from Johns Hopkins University Press:

https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/53857/failing-our-future

Also out this week is Sara Caputo’s Tracks on the Ocean: A History of Trailblazing, Maps, & Maritime Travel from Profile Books:

https://profilebooks.com/work/tracks-on-the-ocean/

Coming out later this month and highlighted in this Hairdressers Journal interview is Elizabeth Block’s Beyond Vanity: The History and Power of Hairdressing from MIT Press:

https://hji.co.uk/new-book-19th-century-hair-and-the-power-of-hairdressing-in-us-history

& also forthcoming is Lou Moore’s much-anticipated The Great Black Hope: Doug Williams, Vince Evans, & the Making of the Black Quarterback from Hachette Books, reviewed here for the Chicago Defender:  

https://chicagodefender.com/the-great-black-hope-new-book-unpacks-legacy-of-black-nfl-quarterbacks/

Finally, I’m very proud that my latest Saturday Evening Post Considering History column was inspired by my older son as we drove him to his first of college:

https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2024/08/considering-history-what-a-virginia-highway-can-tell-us-about-our-history/

If you need more public scholarly goodness, make sure to check out Dion Georgiou’s latest Stop, Look, & Listen newsletter:

Stop, Look, and Listen #31

PS. I’m sure I missed plenty as ever, so please share more pieces, podcasts, & publications below. Thanks, happy reading, listening, & learning, & may it be a restful & reflective holiday!

PPS. & watch this space & all my spaces later today for my new podcast’s First Inning!

PIC