New Books in American Studies

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New Books in American Studies

Interviews with Scholars of America about their New Books Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

  1. 57 MIN. AGO

    Ilan Stavans, "Latino USA: A Cartoon History" (Basic Books, 2024)

    This interview includes Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera, Professor of Humanities, Universidad de Puerto Rico-Mayagüez (UPR-M); Annette Martínez-Iñesta, Instructor of Italian, UPR-M; and Baruch Vergara, Artist and Professor of Plastic Arts, UPR-M. This episode has been sponsored by the Mellon Foundation, the Department of Humanities at the UPR-M, and the Instituto Nuevos Horizontes.  This is the second podcast with Ilan Stavans about Latino USA; the first, in Spanish, is available on the New Books Network en español. About the book: In Latino USA, Latin American and Latino scholar Ilan Stavans captures the joys, nuances, and multiple dimensions of Latino culture within the context of the English language. Combining the solemnity of so-called serious literature and history with the inherently theatrical and humorous form of comics, this cartoon history of Latinos includes Columbus, the Alamo, Desi Arnaz, West Side Story, Castro, Guevara, the Bay of Pigs, Neruda, the Mariel boatlift, Selena, Sonia Sotomayor, and much more. To embrace the sweep of Hispanic civilization and its riot of types, archetypes, and stereotypes, Stavans deploys a series of "cliché figurines" as narrators, including a toucan (displayed regularly in books by García Márquez, Allende, and others), the beloved Latino comedian Cantinflas, a masked wrestler, and Captain America. Their multiple, at times contradictory voices provide unique perspectives on Latino history, together creating a carnivalesque epic, democratic and impartial. Updated to bring the book up to the present moment, this twenty-fifth anniversary edition includes thirty new pages of Latino history, from Hamilton to George Santos. Latino USA, like the history it so entertainingly relates, is a treasure trove of irreverence, wit, subversion, anarchy, politics, humanism, and celebration. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

    1h 34m

  2. 3 DAYS AGO

    The World She Edited: Katharine S. White at the New Yorker

    Our book is: The World She Edited: Katharine S. White at the New Yorker (Mariner Books, 2024) by Dr. Amy Reading, which is a lively and intimate biography of trailblazing and era-defining New Yorker editor Katharine S. White. White helped build the magazine’s prestigious legacy and transform the 20th century literary landscape for women. In the summer of 1925, Katharine Sergeant Angell White walked into The New Yorker’s midtown office and left with a job as an editor. The magazine was only a few months old. Over the next thirty-six years, White would transform the publication into a literary powerhouse.  This exquisite biography brings to life the remarkable relationships White fostered with her writers and how these relationships nurtured an astonishing array of literary talent. She edited a young John Updike, to whom she sent seventeen rejections before a single acceptance, as well as Vladimir Nabokov, with whom she fought incessantly, urging that he drop needlessly obscure, confusing words. White’s biggest contribution, however, was her cultivation of women writers whose careers were made at The New Yorker—Janet Flanner, Mary McCarthy, Elizabeth Bishop, Jean Stafford, Nadine Gordimer, Elizabeth Taylor, Emily Hahn, Kay Boyle, and more. She cleared their mental and financial obstacles, introduced them to each other, and helped them create now classic stories and essays. She propelled these women to great literary heights and, in the process, reinvented the role of the editor, transforming the relationship to be not just a way to improve a writer’s work but also their life. Based on years of scrupulous research, acclaimed author Amy Reading creates a rare and deeply intimate portrait of a prolific editor—through both her incredible tenure at The New Yorker, and her famous marriage to E.B. White—and reveals how she transformed our understanding of literary culture and community. Our guest is: Dr. Amy Reading. Her book, The World She Edited: Katharine S. White at The New Yorker, is a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography. She is also the author of The Mark Inside: A Perfect Swindle, a Cunning Revenge, and a Small History of the Big Con. Her work has been supported by fellowships from the National Endowment of the Humanities and the New York Public Library, among others. She lives in upstate New York, where she serves on the board of her local independent bookstore, Buffalo Street Books. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is the creator, producer and show host of the Academic Life podcast. She uses her PhD in history to explore what stories we tell, and what happens to those we never tell. Listeners may enjoy this playlist: Claire Myers Owens and the Banned Book Dear Miss Perkins Leaving Academia The Misadventures of A Rare Bookseller We Take Our Cities With Us Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by downloading or sharing episodes. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 240+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

    56 min

  3. 4 DAYS AGO

    Yoni Appelbaum, "Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of Prosperity" (Random House, 2025)

    We take it for granted that good neighborhoods—with good schools and good housing—are inaccessible to all but the very wealthy. But, in America, this wasn’t always the case. Though for most of world history your prospects were tied to where you were born, Americans came up with a revolutionary idea: If you didn’t like your lot in life, you could find a better location and reinvent yourself there. Americans moved to new places with unprecedented frequency, and for 200 years, that remarkable mobility was the linchpin of American economic and social opportunity. Then, as the twentieth century wound down, economic and geographic stasis set in, producing deep social polarization.  What happened? In Stuck: How the Privileged and the Propertied Broke the Engine of Prosperity (Random House, 2025), Yoni Appelbaum introduces us to the reformers who destroyed American mobility with discriminatory zoning laws, federal policies, and community gatekeeping. From the first zoning laws enacted to ghettoize Chinese Americans in nineteenth-century Modesto, California, to the toxic blend of private-sector discrimination and racist public policy that trapped Black families in mid-century Flint, Michigan, Appelbaum shows us how Americans lost the freedom to move. Even Jane Jacobs’s well-intentioned fight against development in Greenwich Village choked off opportunity for strivers—and started a trend that would put desirable neighborhoods out of reach for most of us. And yet he also offers glimmers of hope. Perhaps our problems as a nation aren’t as intractable as they seem. If we tear down the barriers to mobility and return to the social and economic dynamism Americans invented, we might be able to rediscover the tolerance and possibility that made us distinctive. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

    29 min

  4. 4 DAYS AGO

    Lori A. Flores, "Awaiting Their Feast: Latinx Food Workers and Activism from World War II to Covid-19" (UNC Press, 2025)

    Though Latinx foodways are eagerly embraced and consumed by people across the United States, the nation exhibits a much more fraught relationship with Latinx people, including the largely underpaid and migrant workers who harvest, process, cook, and sell this desirable food. In Awaiting Their Feast: Latinx Food Workers and Activism from World War II to Covid-19 (UNC Press, 2025), Lori A. Flores traces how our dual appetite for Latinx food and Latinx food labor has evolved from the World War II era to the COVID-19 pandemic, using the US Northeast as an unexpected microcosm of this national history. Spanning the experiences of food workers with roots in Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Central America, Flores's narrative travels from New Jersey to Maine and examines different links in the food chain, from farming to restaurants to seafood processing to the deliverista rights movement. What unites this eclectic material is Flores's contention that as our appetite for Latinx food has grown exponentially, the visibility of Latinx food workers has demonstrably decreased. This precariat is anything but passive, however, and has historically fought--and is still fighting--against low wages and exploitation, medical neglect, criminalization, and deeply ironic food insecurity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

    1h 20m

  5. 4 DAYS AGO

    Adam R. Nelson, "Exchange of Ideas: The Economy of Higher Education in Early America" (U Chicago Press, 2023)

    Exchange of Ideas: The Economy of Higher Education in Early America (U Chicago Press, 2023) launches a breathtakingly ambitious new economic history of American higher education. In this volume, Adam R. Nelson focuses on the early republic, explaining how knowledge itself became a commodity, as useful ideas became salable goods and American colleges were drawn into transatlantic commercial relations. American scholars might once have imagined that higher education could sit beyond the sphere of market activity—that intellectual exchange could transcend vulgar consumerism—but already by the end of the eighteenth century, they saw how ideas could be factored into the nation’s balance of trade. Moreover, they concluded that it was the function of colleges to oversee the complex process whereby knowledge could be priced and purchased. The history of capitalism and the history of higher education, Nelson reveals, are intimately intertwined—which raises a host of important and strikingly urgent questions. How do we understand knowledge and education as commercial goods? Who should pay for them? And, fundamentally, what is the optimal system of higher education in a capitalist democracy? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

    1h 7m

  6. 5 DAYS AGO

    Mary Frances Phillips, "Black Panther Woman: The Political and Spiritual Life of Ericka Huggins" (NYU Press, 2025)

    In this groundbreaking biography, Mary Frances Phillips immerses readers in the life and legacy of Ericka Huggins, a revered Black Panther Party member, as well as a mother, widow, educator, poet, and former political prisoner. In 1969, the police arrested Ericka Huggins along with Bobby Seale and fellow Black Panther Party members, who were accused of murdering Alex Rackley. This marked the beginning of her ordeal, as she became the subject of political persecution and a well-planned FBI COINTELPRO plot. Drawing on never-before-seen archival sources, including prison records, unpublished letters, photographs, FBI records, and oral histories, Phillips foregrounds the paramount role of self-care and community care in Huggins's political journey, shedding light on Ericka's use of spiritual wellness practices she developed during her incarceration. In prison, Huggins was able to survive the repression and terror she faced while navigating motherhood through her unwavering commitment to spiritual practices. In showcasing this history, Phillips reveals the significance of spiritual wellness in the Black Panther Party and Black Power movement. Transcending the traditional male-centric study of the Black Panther Party, Black Panther Woman: The Political and Spiritual Life of Ericka Huggins (NYU Press, 2025) offers an innovative analysis of Black political life at the intersections of gender, motherhood, and mass incarceration. This book serves as an invaluable toolkit for contemporary activists, underscoring the power of radical acts of care as well as vital strategies to thrive in the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

    39 min

  7. 5 DAYS AGO

    The Soundworld of Harriet Tubman

    Just in time for Black History Month, we share an episode we’ve been excitedly working on for a number of months now. Ethnomusicologist Maya Cunningham brings us “The Sound World of Harriet Tubman.” Maya Cunningham is an activist and jazz singer currently completing a Ph.D. at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in Afro-American studies with a concentration in ethnomusicology.  We first came across Maya’s work last year as part of The Harriet Tubman Bicentennial Project, an online initiative from Ms. magazine honoring the 200th anniversary of Harriet Tubman’s birth in 1822. It’s a remarkable package that adds many dimensions of understanding of the underground railroad conductor and feminist icon: Her experience of disability due to a blow to the head by a white overseer; her creation of a home for the aged; her love of the natural world; and much more. And to us, the richest of these essays was Maya’s the “Sound World of Harriet Tubman,” which used field recordings, historical research, and ethnomusicological research to explore the roles of sound and music, and voice in Tubman’s life and leadership. The piece included a Spotify playlist so you could listen as you read.  Today, we’re thrilled to bring you what we hope will be an even more immersive experience: Maya Cunningham reading her essay, and thanks to the editing and mixing skills of Phantom Power producer Ravi Krishnaswami, her field recordings and playlist selections are mixed into the story.  And just a quick note, you’re going to hear about the American Christian revival known as the Second Great Awakening, which stirred both Black and white people from the late 1700s to the mid-1800s. You’ll also hear about the Invisible Church, where enslaved African Americans were able to worship secretly and autonomously and through the singing of folk spirituals, which differed greatly from white religious music at the time, but would go on to influence not only gospel music but pretty much every form of popular music we know today. If you want to learn more about this history, a great place to start is a book edited by two professors Mack studied with at Indiana University, Drs. Mellonee V. Burnim and Portia K. Maultsby. It’s called African American Music: An Introduction.  And today, we share our Patrons-only segment, “What’s Good,” in our main feed. Maya will recommend something good to read, listen to, and do.  Today’s musical selections and soundscapes are by Maya Cunningham. The show was mixed and edited by Ravi Krishnaswami. The Harriet Tubman image was created by Maddie Haynes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

    45 min

  8. 6 DAYS AGO

    Hunter Price, "Sacred Capital: Methodism and Settler Colonialism in the Empire of Liberty" (U Virginia Press, 2024)

    In the early years of American independence, Methodism emerged as the new republic’s fastest growing religious movement and its largest voluntary association. Following the contours of settler expansion, the Methodist Episcopal Church also quickly became the largest denomination in the early American West. With Sacred Capital: Methodism and Settler Colonialism in the Empire of Liberty (University of Virginia Press, 2024), Dr. Hunter Price resituates the Methodist Episcopal Church as a settler-colonial institution at the convergence of “the Methodist Age” and Jefferson’s “Empire of Liberty.” Dr. Price offers a novel interpretation of the Methodist Episcopal Church as a network through which mostly white settlers exchanged news of land and jobs and facilitated financial transactions. Benefiting from Indigenous dispossession and removal policies, settlers made selective, strategic use of the sacred and the secular in their day-to-day interactions to advance themselves and their interests. By analyzing how Methodists acted as settlers while identifying as pilgrims, Dr. Price illuminates the ways that ordinary white Americans fulfilled Jefferson’s vision of an Empire of Liberty while reinforcing the inequalities at its core. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

    1h 3m
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29 Ratings

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Interviews with Scholars of America about their New Books Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

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