Cambridge American History Seminar Podcast

Cambridge American History Seminar Podcast

Where big ideas in history meet open conversation. Each episode invites listeners into the Seminar experience, where, every Monday afternoon during term, visiting scholars and graduate students exchange ideas about new lines of historical inquiry shaping the future of the field. We talk about presenters' current research and paper, their broader academic interests and the significance of their research in the current moment. If you have any feedback, suggestions or questions, please contact our producer via email at ds2125@cantab.ac.uk. Thanks for listening!

  1. May 20

    Dr. Caroline Johnston, 'Rocky Mountain Extractivism in Washington'

    This episode explores ‘carbon cowboys,’ the creation of A Blueprint for Conservative Government (1980), and an emerging historical concept: ‘extractive-statism.’ Dr Caroline Johnston is a political, environmental, and economic historian of the modern United States, and, since September 2025, the Paul Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in American History at Cambridge University.  At the seminar, she presented chapter five of her prospective manuscript, which examines the intersection of fossil fuel extraction in the Rocky Mountain West during the 1970s and 1980s and the rise of the modern American Right. She explains how fossil fuel executives in this milieu developed a paradoxical ideology: demanding extensive federal subsidies and intervention while simultaneously invoking the imagery of the rugged individualist ‘frontier cowboy’ to denounce government regulation. “And their rhetoric is explicitly anti-statist—they never acknowledge that they have historically and contemporarily benefited from enormous subsidies and structural aid from the government.”  Central to her research is the influence of figures such as Joseph Coors, descendant of the founder of the Coors Brewing Company, who leveraged wealth generated from the regional oil boom and established the influential conservative institution: The Heritage Foundation. In 1980, the Heritage Foundation published Mandate for Leadership: A Blueprint for Conservative Government, whose policy recommendations were later adopted in significant part by the Reagan administration. Keep an eye out for Dr Caroline Johnston’s (first) book, tentatively titled Carbon Cowboys. We’re excited!  Referenced in this discussion: [24:21] Richard White, Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America (W.W. Norton & Company, 2011)    [31:10] Heather Cox Richardson, How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America (Oxford University Press, 2020) Caroline Johnston presented at the seminar and spoke with us in Michaelmas term, on 17 November 2025. Co-hosts  Shea Hendry — History PhD Candidate, Hughes Hall  Shea’s research examines the children of Loyalist refugees who embodied both American citizenship and British subjecthood—concurrently and consecutively—throughout the Early National period.  Megan Renoir — History PhD Candidate, Homerton College  Megan’s research examines the history of U.S. land institutions, nineteenth- and twentieth-century federal Indian policy, and violence against the NCRNT. Her work expands our understanding of the relationships between federalism, Western property institutions, and intractable land conflicts.    Production by Daisy Semmler, US History MPhil, Fitzwilliam College (2025).

    41 min

  2. May 13

    Dr. Patrick Griffin, 'The American Revolution and Global Empire'

    “Whether we like it or not, the American Revolution is kind of central to the idea of American civic life, and very central to American notions of sense of self. So, that's critical—and it has been that way consistently, really, since the time of the American Revolution itself, until this very day.”  This episode features a conversation with historian Patrick Griffin, a scholar whose research traverses histories of revolution, empire, migration, adaptation, and colonial violence across early America (17th & 18th centuries) and the wider Atlantic world.  Presenting in Michaelmas term (10 November 2025), Griffin's seminar paper examined the American Revolution as part of a connected age of political transformation, tracing these tensions through the life and career of Charles Cornwallis.  "The past is a complex space, and we are drawn to draw things in white and black. But I think my work consistently (maybe frustratingly so) draws us to the grey, to kind of the in-between-space, when imperfect people in the past are trying to do what they can to manage unstable contexts".  At the University of Notre Dame, Patrick Griffin is the Madden-Hennebry Professor of History and Director of the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies. He is also a Bye-Fellow at St Edmund’s College, Cambridge.  See recently published book by Patrick Griffin: 'The Age of Atlantic Revolution: The Fall and Rise of a Connected World' (Yale University Press, 2023). Thank you to our guest, and thank you for listening! Co-hosts  Shea Hendry — History PhD Candidate, Hughes Hall  Shea’s research examines the children of Loyalist refugees who embodied both American citizenship and British subjecthood—concurrently and consecutively—throughout the Early National period.  Megan Renoir — History PhD Candidate, Homerton College  Megan’s research examines the history of U.S. land institutions, nineteenth- and twentieth-century federal Indian policy, and violence against the NCRNT. Her work expands our understanding of the relationships between federalism, Western property institutions, and intractable land conflicts.  Production by Daisy Semmler, US History MPhil, Fitzwilliam College (2025).

    40 min

  3. Apr 30

    Annual Pitt Professor Beth Bailey, 'Making Change: Why the US Army Matters'

    "Of course, it's an institution of social change. Because it has to manage all of the social changes that are taking place in society—because it's pulling people in."  In this episode, we're joined by special guest Beth Bailey, the 2025–26 Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions at the University of Cambridge and Visiting Fellow of Jesus College.   Established in the 1940s, the Pitt Professorship brings some of the most distinguished U.S.-based scholars in history and the social sciences to Cambridge. Past holders include (but aren't limited to) Eugene Genovese, John Hope Franklin, Heather Ann Thompson, Kathleen Brown, Bernard Bailyn, David Blight, and Erika Lee.   Beth Bailey is a historian of Military, War, and Society in the modern United States, as well as of Gender and Sexuality in twentieth-century America. She recently completed a decade as a member of the History Faculty at the University of Kansas, where she served as Foundation Distinguished Professor and Founding Director of the Centre for Military, War, and Society Studies.   In 2022, she received the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize for lifetime achievement from the Society for Military History. She also served as chair of the Department of the Army Historical Advisory Subcommittee, a role appointed by the Secretary of the Army.  “...No matter how significant institutions and structures are, individuals can and do make a difference.”    Hosted by Megan Renoir, PhD Candidate at Homerton College  Production by Daisy Semmler, MPhil, Fitzwilliam College (2025)    Timestamped References  [07:26]  Dissertation & first book on the history of dating    From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America,  John Hopkins University Press, 1989.     [17:10] Co-edited volume with Kara Vuic  Managing Sex in the U.S. Military, co-edited with Kara Vuic, Alesha Doan, Shannon Portillo, University of Nebraska Press, 2022.    [22:12] Recent publication: An Army Afire  An Army Afire: The U.S. Army and the Problem of Race in the Vietnam Era, University of North Carolina Press, 2023    [27:51] Edited publications with historian David Farber    Beyond Pearl Harbor:  A Pacific History, co-edited with David Farber, University Press of Kansas, 2019    America in the Seventies, co-edited with David Farber,  University Press of Kansas, 2004    [32:09] Book on ‘War Time’ read in Bailey's MPhil Seminar    Mary L. Dudziak, War Time: An Idea, Its History, Its Consequences, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.

    35 min

  4. Apr 15

    Prof. David Farber, 'The War on Drugs'

    “What makes one drug or another useful to politicians?”  David Farber asks.  At the seminar, Farber presented new work on the late twentieth-century “war on drugs” in the United States—what it was, how it functioned, and whether it has proven politically durable. Focusing on the legislative process, he examines the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act and its disproportionate criminalisation of crack cocaine, asking how and why the federal government came to wage such a “war.”  In this conversation, Farber sets out the questions that underpin his current research inquiry, focusing on three interlocking dynamics:  The degree to which Black politicians, particularly at the federal level, supported the war on drugs in response to the acute impact of drug abuse in poor Black communities   The electoral incentives driving policymakers to adopt punitive approaches, as voters demanded visible action against what was perceived as a widespread crisis   The legislative process itself: how Congress attempted—or failed—to govern the issue, culminating in measures such as the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act  David Farber is a historian of modern US history, democracy, political culture, the role of business in American society, social change movements, and drug use and policy. He is the Roy A. Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Kansas and a Bye-Fellow of Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He presented this paper on 3 November 2025 (Michaelmas term). Two months—to the date—after we recorded this conversation, US military forces entered Caracas and arrested the incumbent Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores, on charges related to “narco-terrorism.” The strike and seizure by US forces on 3 January 2026 was codenamed Operation Absolute Resolve. (⁠⁠⁠BBC News⁠⁠⁠) “I thought in some ways the war on drugs had ended. It's just such a good tool for politicians. Here it is again in bizarre form, aimed at something totally distant from what the president's claiming. Yeah. This is a foreign policy initiative.” (Farber, November 2025) Referenced in discussion: [15:30] Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (originally published in 2010 by The New Press). Adapted into the multiple award-winning documentary 13th (Netflix, 2016). Its title refers to the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, abolishing slavery and involuntary servitude “except as punishment for a crime.” Co-Hosts: Dr Hugh Wood recently completed his PhD at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. His research examines the relationship between private violence and American state-building in the second half of the nineteenth century.  Megan Renoir is a PhD Candidate at Homerton College, Cambridge. She studies the relationship between Western property institutions, state development, and violence against minorities, including Indigenous dispossession.  Production by Daisy Semmler (MPhil 2025)

    30 min

  5. Apr 1

    Dr. Erin Shearer, 'Enslaved Women, Infanticide, and a Feminist History of Harm: A New Direction in Slavery Studies'

    N.B.: This episode describes sexual violence and graphic bodily harm. (With sincere apologies for the re-upload due to a technical issue.) “We’re still, as a society, so apprehensive about ascribing to women a nature of violence. When we do, we often use pathological discourses as a way of explaining why these women would be exceptions to the rule.”   Our guest, Dr Erin Shearer, is a Fellow in Residence at the Rothermere American Institute (University of Oxford), Associate Lecturer in History and Postgraduate Visiting Fellow (University of Reading), and Associate Tutor (University of Warwick).   The paper ‘Enslaved Women, Infanticide, and a Feminist History of Harm: A New Direction in Slavery Studies’  emerges from Shearer's current monograph, which asks:   How and why did enslaved women in the antebellum US South use violence as a form of resistance?   Challenging long-standing historiography, Dr Erin Shearer finds that deliberate, retributive acts of violence were not the preserve of enslaved men, but a shared and interchangeable phenomenon.  This paper intervenes in a largely unexplored area of scholarship by examining enslaved women’s acts of harm and infanticide against the white planter-class children of their enslavers. Using new methodological approaches to slavery's archive, and applying an intersectional Feminist History of Harm, Dr Shearer sheds critical light on the inner lives and motivations that inform why women facilitated acts of violence within, and against, slavery's coercive regime.   This episode explores what it means to take women’s violence seriously—and why doing so alters how we understand lived experiences of slavery, resistance, and historical method. “It’s important that we give women the same complexity that we’ve given men, and that we look at women as multifaceted beings…the good, the bad, and the ugly.”  This episode was recorded in Michaelmas term on 20 October 2025. See Dr Shearer's recent article: Shearer, “Challenging the Overseer: Enslaved Women’s Violent Resistance in the US Antebellum South.” (ANCH, 2025) And related episodes: Prof. Emily West, 'Enslaved Women and the Duality of Feeding in the Antebellum South'  Prof. Sophie White, 'His Master's Grace": Extra-Judicial Violence in Atlantic Slave Societies'  Hosted this week by:   Daisy Semmler, MPhil (2025), Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge  Daisy researches how enslaved and free Black communities learned to read and write during the anti-literacy period in the continental United States (c.1740–1865).   Timestamped References 04:55 ⁠Library of Congress – WPA Slave Narratives ⁠ 11:00 King, Stolen Childhood: Slave Youth in Nineteenth-Century America (2nd ed. 2011) 10:56 Jones-Rogers, They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South (2020) 18:19 ⁠ Nunley, “Thrice Condemned: Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Practice of Leniency in Antebellum Virginia Courts ” (JSH, 2021)⁠ Nunley, The Demands of Justice: Enslaved Women, Capital Crime, and Clemency in Early Virginia (2023) Taylor, Brooding Over Bloody Revenge: Enslaved Women's Lethal Resistance (2023) 22:37 Johnson, “On Agency” (JSH, 2003)and “Agency: A Ghost Story” in Foner & Johnson, Slavery's Ghost: The Problem of Freedom in the Age of Emancipation (2011) 23:14 Maglaque, “Reproductive Unfreedom and Structural Violence in Early Modern Catholic Europe” (JEMH, 2025) 26:39 West & Shearer, “Fertility Control, Shared Nurturing, and Dual Exploitation: The Lives of Enslaved Mothers in the Antebellum United States” (WHR, 2018) ⁠Knight, “Mothering and Labour in the Slaveholding Households of the Antebellum American South” (P&P, 2020)⁠ 28:08 Hall, Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts (2021)

    32 min

  6. Mar 6

    Prof. Eliga Gould, 'Union and Disunion: The Turbulent History of the United States' Founding Treaty'

    When we think about the founding documents of the United States, two likely come to mind: the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. But perhaps not the third — the Treaty of Paris (1783), the agreement that ended the Revolutionary War and formally recognized American independence.  Our guest this week, Professor Eliga H. Gould, argues that this largely forgotten founding document is essential for understanding how the United States actually came into being. Far from a clean moment of national birth, the treaty emerged from the aftermath of a brutal civil war, triggering mass displacement, contested borders, and fragile diplomatic compromises within and beyond British North America.   Eliga H. Gould is the (2025-26) Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Professor of American History at University of Oxford and (for 30+ years) the Professor of History at the University of New Hampshire.    Gould’s new book project, Peace and Independence: The Turbulent History of the United States’ Founding Treaty, examines the social, economic, and constitutional consequences of the 1783 Paris Treaty.   The three themes guiding this research project are the making, unmaking, and remaking of the American Union; the uncertain fate of the “new order” many believed the Revolution had inaugurated; and the enduring theme of partition.   Along the way, we also reflect on what treaties actually do. Gould argues that treaties rarely produce clean independence; instead, they bind nations into global systems of diplomacy, commerce, and compromise — a lesson with enduring implications for American foreign policy.  “Exiting the world has never been a viable option.”  Co-hosts (PhD Candidates)  Shea Hendry's research examines the children of Loyalist refugees who embodied both American citizenship and British subjecthood — concurrently and consecutively — throughout the Early National period.  Megan Renoir looks at the history of U.S. land institutions, nineteenth- and twentieth-century federal Indian policy, and violence against the NCRNT. She aims to expanding our understanding of the relationships between federalism, Western property institutions, and intractable land conflicts.  Production by Daisy Semmler (MPhil 2025).

    42 min

  7. Feb 19

    Dr. Kathleen Belew, ‘Thoughts and Prayers: America in the Age of Mass Violence’

    “In 2024…the number of children and teachers killed in school shootings surpassed not only military, but active police duty deaths. So our entire carceral and military apparatus had fewer fatalities than children and teachers in schools. And we’ve gone up since then. We’re on a steady inflection up.” Our guest academic this week, Dr Kathleen Belew, is a historian of the present. She defines the current period in the United States as an “Age of Mass Violence” that begins in 1999 with Columbine — not because it was the first school shooting, but because it marked the start of treating school shootings as a “normal part” of American life. “Thoughts and prayers,” Belew explains, “is a phrase that comes out of that moment. We can historicize it precisely to Columbine… At the time, ‘thoughts and prayers’ was sort of the deepest, most compassionate social response that we could come up with to the slaughter of children.” Thoughts and Prayers is also the chilling title of her current research project — and the starting point for one of her central questions: why did this refrain come to stand in for political action? In this conversation, we dissect how fear and suburban isolation have normalised gun violence, and why children have come to occupy a tragic central place in America’s culture of mass shootings. Belew reflects on the relationship between private violence and state power, the spiritual framing of mass violence, and the possibilities for reimagining community safety in an era defined by fear and fragmentation. Throughout, we consider what it means to write a history of the present — and how historical thinking might help open pathways toward collective responsibility, hope, and change. Kathleen Belew is Associate Professor of American Studies at Northwestern University. She is also an expert on the white power movement and the author of Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America (Harvard, 2019). Co-hosts: Dr Hugh Wood recently completed his PhD at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. His research examines the relationship between private violence and American state building in the second half of the nineteenth century. Megan Renoir is a PhD Candidate at Homerton College, Cambridge. She studies the relationship between Western property institutions, state development, and violence against minorities, including Indigenous dispossession. Production by Daisy Semmler (MPhil 2025).

    47 min

  8. 11/24/2025

    Dr. Brenna Greer, 'African Americans and the Photographic Seat of Honour'

    ‘Why do people look at Black people the way they do?’ This is the central provocation of our guest scholar's work. Dr Brenna Greer is an African Americanist and Associate Professor of History at Wellesley College. Her work traverses the histories of culture, race, gender, and, more recently, citizenship in the United States. We discuss her paper, “African Americans and the Photographic Seat of Honour,” which emerges from her ongoing project examining self-portraits created by African Americans, particularly in the nineteenth century. Questions of historical process and causality drive her research: How did these portraits shape ideals and images of Blackness? And how might they help teach students and wider publics about the Black past—Black freedom, activism, and protest? Co-hosts:  Megan Renoir (PhD Candidate) researches Indigenous sovereignty and land conflict. Megan’s recent publication looked at“Recognition as Resilience: How an Unrecognized Indigenous Nation is Using Visibility as a Pathway Toward Restorative Justice".  Sam Lanevi (PhD Candidate) researches World War II fraternization and war bride policy with a particular focus on German and Japanese war brides. Production by Daisy Semmler (MPhil 2025). This episode was recorded on 26/5/2025.

    41 min
See All (79)

About

Where big ideas in history meet open conversation. Each episode invites listeners into the Seminar experience, where, every Monday afternoon during term, visiting scholars and graduate students exchange ideas about new lines of historical inquiry shaping the future of the field. We talk about presenters' current research and paper, their broader academic interests and the significance of their research in the current moment. If you have any feedback, suggestions or questions, please contact our producer via email at ds2125@cantab.ac.uk. Thanks for listening!

Information

You Might Also Like