Cambridge American History Seminar Podcast

“The wolf is a metaphor for race war, and we mean race war on a genocidal scale.”  We release this episode at a historic moment. This Saturday, 4 July 2026, marks the semiquincentennial of America's founding.  Few historians are better placed, with their complementary research expertise, to reassess the legacy of what is commemorated each year—and especially this year—as Independence Day. Our...

“What happened? At one point, we were really close to banning polystyrene. What happened?” In this episode, we’re joined by Dr Elsa Devienne (Assistant Professor, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Northumbria University), a scholar of the twentieth-century United States with expertise in environmental history, urban history, the history of the body and, more recently, discard studies and t...

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 prese...

“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 trav...

"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 Pr...

“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,...

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 Res...

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 es...

“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 c...

‘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 Ho...

Dr Kaeten Mistry discusses his current research on the history of secrecy and the tensions it raises between civil liberties and national security. This draws from Chapter 2 of his current book project, The Secrecy Regime (working title), which traces U.S. state secrecy from its early twentieth-century origins to the present. Dr Mistry is a scholar of the United States and the world, specialising...

Please note that this episode contains discussion of sexual violence. This week, PhD candidates Sam Lanevi and Megan Renoir sit down with Dr. Kaisha Esty to discuss her current research project. Dr. Esty is Assistant Professor of History, African American Studies, and Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. She’s on sabbatical this year as an AAUW postdoctora...

“We Don’t Call Them Wars Anymore,” explores the history of international intervention after the Second World War, and how the role of the United Nations has shifted over time. We speak with Dr. Lydia Walker, Assistant Professor and Myers Chair in Global Military History at Ohio State University, and author of the multiple award-winning book ‘ States-in-Waiting: A Counter Narrative of Global Decolo...

Dr. Wendell Nii Laryea Adjetey ( Nii Laryea Osabu I, Atrékor Wé Oblahii kè Oblayéé Mantsè) — Associate Professor of History and William Dawson Scholar at McGill University — discusses his book: ' Cross-Border Cosmopolitans: The Making of a Pan-African North America '(The University of North Carolina Press, 2023). His book examines how African-descended peoples engaged in liberation movements based...

In this episode of the Cambridge American History Seminar Podcast, we’re joined by Dr Tara Bynum, Associate Professor of English & African American Studies at the University of Iowa.  She discusses a paper related to her book project, titled: ‘ Obour Tanner Makes an Archive: Or, How to Remember Your Famous (and Deceased) 18th-Century Friend, Phillis Wheatley.’ Dr. Bynum’s research centres on a...

In this special episode, we’re joined by the incoming Paul Mellon Professor, Mia Bay. She is a leading scholar of American and African American intellectual, cultural, and social history. She has won multiple book awards. Some of her influential works include ‘ The White Image in the Black Mind’ (Oxford University Press, 2000), ‘ Travelling Black: A Story of Race and Resistance’ (Harvard Universit...

Axel Schäfer, Professor in American Studies at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, and of U.S. History at the Obama Institute, joins us in this episode. He discusses the paper he gave in our seminar, titled 'The “Tempest Tost” and the “People of Plenty”: Migration and the Politics of Consumption in the U.S. Since the 1880s.' Professor Schäfer examines the relationship between immigrati...

In this episode, we’re talking with Molly Warsh, Associate Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh, about her new book project, 'Servants of the Seasons.' Molly is also an editor of the Journal of Early Modern History. We dive into how her work is reshaping our understanding of iterancy, labour, and seasonality in the early modern world—and what it means to study both people a...

In this episode, we’re joined by Kimberly Welch , Associate Professor of History and Law at Vanderbilt University. Kim is currently a Fellow-in-Residence at the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford. She spoke with us about the paper she presented in the seminar, titled “Eulalie Mandeville’s Money: A Free Black Woman and Her Legacy in Antebellum New Orleans.” It’s part of her c...

Today on the podcast, we speak with Elizabeth Ellis, Associate Professor of History at Princeton University, about her recent book titled ‘ The Great Power of Small Nations: Indigenous Diplomacy in the Gulf South’ (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022). Professor Ellis focuses on Indigenous polities in early America, and how decisions made by Native nations with strategically small governance st...

This week on the podcast, PhD candidates Hugh Wood and Megan Renoir sit down with Sophie FitzMaurice, Research Fellow at the Centre for History and Economics at the University of Cambridge. Sophie discusses her paper, "From Perishable Property to Industrial Preservation: Remaking the Telegraph Pole in the Early 20th-Century U.S." —an exploration of the environmental and material history...

This week, PhD candidates Fergus and Caroline are joined by Shane Hamilton, Reader in Strategy, Management and Society at the University of York. They discuss his recent paper, “The Persistence of Glyphosate: Monsanto’s Strategic Maintenance of Roundup, the World’s Most Enduring Herbicide Technology.” The conversation explores the history of Monsanto’s production of glyphosate—better known by its...

This week on the podcast, Dr. Tom Smith,   Affiliated Lecturer and Keasbey Fellow in American Studies at Selwyn College, University of Cambridge, examines how Protestant missionaries situated themselves within local Pacific contexts, and American empire more generally. You can read more of Smith's work in the recent publication of his book, Word across the Water: American Protestant Missionaries,...

Gary Gerstle, the outgoing Paul Mellon Professor of American History at Cambridge and author of multiple award winning books including American Crucible , Liberty and Coercion , and, most recently, the Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order, joins Fergus and Hugh to discuss his career, major works, the state of the historical profession and the university sphere, and the contemporary political mome...

Dr. Lila Chambers, research fellow at Gonville and Cauis College, Cambridge, joins Shea Hendry and Hugh Wood to discuss her upcoming book, Liquid Capital: Alcohol and the Rise of Slavery in the British Atlantic,1580-1737. Lila's research traces the intertwined development of political economy, diplomacy, and race in West Africa, the Caribbean, the British Isles, and North America between the sixte...