Drafting the Past

In this episode, I'm thrilled to be joined by historian Dr. Ruby Lal .  When I first started thinking about this interview more than a year ago, I read Ruby's book Vagabond Princess: The Great Adventures of Gulbadan . I was swept away by the book, which is a history biography of Princess Gulbadan in the early decades of the Mughal Empire. Ruby is also the author of Empress: The Astonishing Reign o...

Stephanie Gorton is a writer, editor, and journalist whose work has been published in a range of outlets including The New Yorker , Smithsonian , and Paris Review Daily . She has worked in editorial roles at several independent presses, and her first book came out in 2020, titled Citizen Reporters: S. S. McClure, Ida Tarbell, and the Magazine that Rewrote America . Her second book, which came out...

In this episode, I'm joined by Dr. Padraic Scanlan . Padraic is an associate professor at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on the history of labor in Britain and the British empire. He's the author of three books, including Freedom's Debtors: British Antislavery in Sierra Leone in the Age of Revolutions and Slave Empire: How Slavery Made Modern Britain . His newest book, out this ye...

Drafting the Past is a show about the craft of writing history, hosted by historian and writer Kate Carpenter. In this episode, Kate is joined by historian Dr. Omar Valerio-Jiménez . Omar is a professor of history at the University of Texas at San Antonio, where he is also an associate dean for graduate studies. He originally worked as an engineer before going back to school to become a historian....

Welcome back to Drafting the Past, a podcast where we talk all about the craft of writing history. I'm Kate Carpenter and for this episode, I'm delighted to be joined on the podcast by Dr. Emily Herring . As you'll hear, I've been following Emily's career for a while now, and I was eager to ask about her first book and her shift from academia to full-time writing. Her book is called Herald of a Re...

Welcome back to Drafting the Past. I'm Kate Carpenter, and this is a podcast about the craft of writing history. In this episode, I'm joined by historian and writer Dr. Surekha Davies . Surekha is a former history professor who now writes full-time, and she can also be found speaking about history and consulting on monsters. In fact, monsters have played a major role in much of her research. Her f...

In this episode of Drafting the Past, host Kate Carpenter is joined by historian Dr. Lyndal Roper . Lyndal is a professor at the University of Oxford and the author of six books on gender, religion, witchcraft, and German history. Her newest book out this year is a history of the sixteenth-century German Peasants' War titled Summer of Fire and Blood . The book follows the movement, beliefs, hopes,...

In this episode of Drafting the Past, host Kate Carpenter is joined by Dr. Judith Giesberg . Dr. Giesberg is a historian and professor at Villanova University. She is the author of six books focused on the U.S. Civil War and its aftermath. She is also an active digital and public historian, and her newest book is the culmination of these interests. Inspired by an ongoing digital project, Last Seen...

In this episode Kate is joined by writer and historian Dr. Rebecca Brenner Graham . Rebecca is a post-doctoral research associate at Brown University, but before that she taught high school history, an experience that we talk a lot more about in this episode. Her first book, out now, is called Dear Miss Perkins: A Story of Frances Perkins's Efforts to Aid Refugees from Nazi Germany , and it is not...

This is Drafting the Past, a podcast about the craft of writing history. In this episode, host Kate Carpenter is joined by historian Dr. Marlene Daut . Marlene is a professor at Yale University and is the author of four books, as well as an editor of several more. The most recent two of those books are Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution , which was a winner of t...

In this episode, host Kate Carpenter is joined by Dr. James Tejani . James is an associate professor of history at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. His first book, A Machine to Move Ocean and Earth: The Making of the Port of Los Angeles—and America came out last year with Norton, and it's a fascinating history that covers Western settlement, slavery, the Civil War, science and engineering, and much more....

Welcome back to Drafting the Past, a show about the craft of writing history. In this episode, Kate Carpenter interviews historian Dr. Seth Rockman . Seth is a historian at Brown University. His first book was called Scraping By: Wage Labor, Slavery, and Survival in Early Baltimore , and he is also the co-editor of the volume Slavery's Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development . H...

Hello there, this is Drafting the Past, and I'm Kate Carpenter. In each episode, I interview a historian about their writing process, and today I'm joined by Duke University historian James Chappel .  James is the author of two books. His first book is titled Catholic Modern: The Challenge of Totalitarianism and the Remaking of the Church , and it focuses on the transformation of the Catholic chur...

Episode 55 features Dr. Robin Bernstein . Robin is a cultural historian who specializes in race and racism from the nineteenth century to the present, and is the Dillon Professor of American History at Harvard University. Her first, award-winning book was Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights , and she has written essays and articles on a wide range of subjec...

In this episode I'm so happy to welcome historian Prithi Kanakamedala to talk about writing with me. Prithi is a professor of history at Bronx Community College CUNY, and is also a faculty member at CUNY Graduate Center. She is an active public historian, who has worked with a wide range of cultural organizations. One of the projects she worked on as a historian and curator for a wide-ranging publ...

Welcome to Drafting the Past, a podcast all about the craft of writing history. I'm Kate Carpenter, and in each episode I talk with a historian about the practices, archival frustrations and joys, drafts and revisions and more that go into writing history. In this episode, I'm delighted to be joined by Dr. Andrew Kahrl . Andrew is a professor of history and African American Studies at the Universi...

Welcome back to Drafting the Past, a podcast about the craft of writing history. In this episode, host Kate Carpenter welcomes someone a little bit different to the podcast: writer and writing coach Helen Betya Rubinstein . Helen is neither a historian nor a writer or history herself, but she has been working as a writing coach for the past six years, often with historians and other academics. If...

In this episode, Kate Carpenter interviews Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky, a historian of the presidency, political culture, and the government, and the executive director of the George Washington Presidential Library. Her first book, which came out in 2020, was The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution . She's also the co-editor of the book Mourning the Presidents: Loss a...

Drafting the Past is a podcast about the craft of writing history hosted by Kate Carpenter. If you've been listening for a while, you know that oral histories have come up pretty frequently on the show, and that I also work with oral histories in my own current research project. So I was delighted when the opportunity came up to talk with today's guest, Clara Bingham . Clara is a journalist, and h...

In this episode Kate interviewed not one, but three authors: Robert Alpert, Merle Eisenberg , and Lee Mordechai . Together, Robert, Merle, and Lee are the co-authors of a new book, Diseased Cinema: Plagues, Pandemics, and Zombies in American Movies . Robert Alpert is a lawyer and film scholar who teaches at Fordham University and has written extensively about film following his career as a practic...

In this episode, host Kate Carpenter is joined by historian, writer, and podcaster Dr. Neil J. Young. Neil has been a prolific writer in venues like The Atlantic , Slate , the Los Angeles Times , and many more, a contributing columnist to the HuffPost and The Week , and he is also one of the co-hosts of the terrific history podcast Past Present . He also helped to create and produce the podcast We...

Hey DTP listeners! I'm sharing an episode of Historians at the Movies, a podcast by Jason Herbert, in which I was the guest historian! If you like what Jason is doing, check out historiansatthemovies.com .  Historians At The Movies features historians from around the world talking about your favorite movies and the history behind them. This isn't rivet-counting; this is fun. Eventually, we'll stea...

I'm delighted to introduce you to my guest today, historian of science Dr. Kathleen Sheppard . Kate is a professor at Missouri S & T University, and the author of three books, as well as the editor of two books of correspondence. Kate is a historian of Egyptology, and her first book was a biography of Margaret Alice Murray , the first woman to become a university-trained Egyptologist in Britain. T...

My guest in this episode is Dr. Tore Olsson , associate professor of history at the University of Tennessee. Dr. Olsson's first book, Agrarian Crossings: Reformers and the Remaking of the US and Mexican Countryside , is an award-winning scholarly book. But his new book does something quite different. Titled Red Dead's History: A Video Game, an Obsession, and American's Violent Past , the book open...

Welcome back to Drafting the Past. This is a show about the craft of writing history. In this episode, host Kate Carpenter interviewed historian and web developer Dr. Jason Heppler . Kate has been following Jason's work and career path for some time now and was so excited to talk with him about his new book, Silicon Valley and the Environmental Inequalities of High-Tech Urbanism , which came out e...