Cambridge American History Seminar Podcast Cambridge American History Seminar Podcast

Prof. Manfred Berg, Curt Engelhorn Chair in American History at the University of Heidelberg, joins Megan Renoir and Hugh Wood to discuss the 2nd Amendment, mass shootings, the militia movement, and the possibility of another American civil war.

Dr. Erik Mathisen joins Hugh Wood and Rob O'Sullivan to discuss his paper "The Problem of Free Labor and the Origins of the Republican Party." Dr. Mathisen places the idea of Free Labor within a global context and attempts to understand how the flaws of Free Labor were glossed over by proponents and later historians.

This week, Elizabeth Varon, Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Professor of American History, University of Oxford, and Langbourne M. Williams Professor of American History, University of Virginia, examines the political discourse of the Reconstruction era, and particularly the origins of the phrase "white supremacy."

NB this episode contains reference to outdated and offensive language.

Dr. Noam Maggor, Senior Lecturer in American History at Queen Mary, joins the podcast to discuss the transformation of American capitalism in the late-C19th. We focus on railroad regulation as a tool of the American 'developmental state'.

We discuss the complex history of ‘freedom’ in American history with 2023 Pulitzer Prize winner Jefferson Cowie (Vanderbilt University).

Prof. Andrew Preston is joined by two of his supervisees, Sam and Caleb. They discuss his next book project, which is about the invention of national security in the New Deal period.