#ScholarSunday Thread 192

Published on September 29, 2024

Here it is, my 192^nd #ScholarSunday thread of great public scholarly writing & work, podcast episodes, new & forthcoming books from the last week. Share more below & enjoy, all!

Starting with some favorites from the week as ever, including John MacNeill Miller for LitHub on the prescient novelist Harriet Martineau:

https://lithub.com/the-forgotten-female-novelist-who-foresaw-ecology-environmentalism-and-realist-fiction/

For the History journal, Kelly Marino offered an excellent overview of current studies on women’s suffrage:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1468-229X.13425

& speaking of the profession, thoughtful piece from Bonnie J. Morris for the AHA’s Perspectives on the place of handwriting in history classes:

https://www.historians.org/perspectives-article/cursive-conversations/

Turning to current events, Will Bunch’s Philly Inquirer column is a must-read as ever, this time on threats to campus protest:

https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/berkeley-60th-anniversary-campus-free-speech-20240926.html?id=bUz6ALuskmlak&utm_source=social&utm_campaign=gift_link&utm_medium=referral

Important New York magazine profile of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ new book on Palestine:

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/ta-nehisi-coates-new-book-message-israel-palestine-complicated.html

& for a broader take on such conflicts, check out Nandita Sharma for Public Books on the foundational violence behind national sovereignty:

https://www.publicbooks.org/national-sovereigntys-foundational-violence/?utm_content=buffer2200f&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Lots of great new podcast episodes this week, including the latest Unsung History featuring Crystal Sanders on segregation scholarships at HBCUs:

https://www.unsunghistorypodcast.com/SegregationScholarships/

For episode 52 of Drafting the Past, Kate Carpenter interviewed historical writing coach Helen Betya Rubinstein:

https://draftingthepast.com/podcast-episodes/episode-52-helen-betya-rubinstein-coaches-historian-writers/

Here’s part four of the Lillian Smith Center’s “Dope with Lime” podcast’s examination of Smith & religion:

The Touro Law Review Podcast interviewed Brenda Wineapple on the Scopes trial:

While episode 27 of Waitman Beorn’s Holocaust History podcast features David Kertzer on the Catholic Church & the Holocaust:

For her Freedom Over Fascism podcast, Stephanie Wilson interviewed Emily Cain from Emily’s List on why women should run for office:

RUN FOR OFFICE! ACHIEVE WORLD DOMINATION. Emily Cain, Former ED EMILY's List E 67

My Fitchburg State colleague Kate Jewell has a new podcast, History Mixtapes, which kicked off with Kevin Kruse on college radio histories:

https://www.mixcloud.com/kate-jewell/history-mixtapes-episode-1-kevin-m-kruse-on-college-radio-and-history/

For the latest episode of the HATM podcast, Lou Moore stopped by to talk about Any Given Sunday & his new book on Black quarterbacks:

For episode 55 of Liam Heffernan’s America: A History podcast, he interviewed Farida Jalalzai on whether America is ready to elect a woman president:

https://player.captivate.fm/episode/3363a062-8b87-4b16-b705-c486a80063b9/

PS. I recently had the chance to talk with Liam about my own new podcast & baseball histories, so watch this space for that conversation soon!

& speaking of my podcast The Celestials’ Last Game: Baseball, Bigotry, & the Battle for America, here’s the Fourth Inning: The Workingmen’s Party & the Evolution of California:

https://americanstudier.podbean.com/e/fourth-inning-the-workingmens-party-and-the-evolution-of-california/

Four excellent columns for Time’s Made By History this week, including Syrus Solo Jin on US failures in Iraq & the danger of attacking the “Deep State”:

https://time.com/7021387/iraq-regime-change-deep-state/

Alex Park wrote for Made By History on contexts for Kamala Harris’ rhetoric about her time working at McDonald’s:

https://time.com/7021389/kamala-harris-mcdonalds-democrat-poverty/

While Melissa Blair wrote for Made By History on Harris’ smart choice to not emphasize her potentially groundbreaking feminist achievement:

https://time.com/7022220/kamala-harris-first-woman-equality-feminism/

& Rob Wells wrote for Made By History on how histories reveals the perils of relying on polls in election coverage:

https://time.com/7021454/history-political-poll-error/

Over at the AAIHS’ Black Perspectives blog, the Forum on Black Women’s Activism in the African Diaspora concluded with Kiana Knight’s interview with Carmen Hutchinson Miller:

https://www.aaihs.org/black-womens-global-activism-an-interview-with-carmen-hutchinson-miller/

& Black Perspectives also featured three stand-alone posts this week, including Christina Proenza-Coles on traditions of resistance in the diaspora:

https://www.aaihs.org/traditions-of-resistance-in-the-black-diaspora/

Sherri V. Cummings wrote for Black Perspectives on African Americans & Haiti:

https://www.aaihs.org/african-americans-and-the-first-black-republic/

& finally for Black Perspectives, here’s Parise Carmichael-Murphy on British Caribbean food markets:

https://www.aaihs.org/post-war-representations-of-british-caribbean-food-markets/

Two important new books out this week (& featured in podcast episodes above), including Crystal R. Sanders’ A Forgotten Migration: Black Southerners, Segregation Scholarships, & the Debt Owed to Public HBCUs from UNC Press:

https://uncpress.org/book/9781469679808/a-forgotten-migration/

Also out this week is Lou Moore’s The Great Black Hope: Doug Williams, Vince Evans, & the Making of the Black Quarterback from Hachette:

https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/louis-moore/the-great-black-hope/9781541705098/?lens=publicaffairs

Now out in paperback is Caleb Smith’s Thoreau’s Axe: Distraction & Discipline in American Culture from Princeton UP:

https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691256023/thoreaus-axe

& for lots more book recommendations, check out Kevin Levin’s Civil War Memory newsletter recapping the best Civil War books of 2024:

https://kevinmlevin.substack.com/p/the-best-civil-war-books-of-2024/comments

Speaking of great newsletters, Vaughn Joy’s Review Roulette this week featured a typically thoughtful take on Kurosawa’s masterpiece Rashomon:

A Samurai, A Wife, and A Bandit Walk into the Woods...

While Etienne Toussaint’s Becoming Full offered great advice for crafting scholarly research that inspires & endures:

Mastering the Scholarly Agenda

& over at Dion Georgiou’s Academic Bubble, check out part two of his series on Ealing Studios:  

Ealing Plots (Part II)

Speaking of the Academic Bubble, Dion also shared the 34^th installment of his Stop, Look, & Listen compilation of great public scholarship:

Stop, Look, and Listen #34

Check out my Saturday Evening Post colleague Tanya Roth on Philadelphia’s Young Ladies’ Academy & liberty for 18^th century women:

https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2024/09/womens-work-philadelphia-the-young-ladies-academy-and-a-small-degree-of-liberty-for-18th-century-women/

& I believe that my own latest Considering History column for the Post is one of my most important to date, highlighting strikingly consistent & consistently wrong anti-immigrant myths from across American history:

https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2024/09/considering-history-anti-immigrant-myths-have-been-strikingly-consistent-and-consistently-wrong/

PS. As you can see, that column has started to attract far-right commenters—which is a sign that it’s getting to folks, but also a reminder of the vital need to share all this public scholarly work as widely as possible, to add our voices to these conversations. I hope you’ll do so with my column as with all this excellent work!

& PPS. I’m sure I missed plenty as ever, so please share more public scholarly writing, podcasts, new & forthcoming books below. Thanks, & happy reading, listening, & learning, all!