Cambridge American History Seminar Podcast

Prof. Steven Hahn, Pulitzer Prize winning historian, joins Fergus Seldson Games and Hugh Wood to talk about his new work, Illiberal America: A History. Offered as a corrective to Louis Hartz's classic, The Liberal Tradition in America , Prof. Hahn discusses westward expansion, eugenics, and a deep seated but not intractable illiberal current that has emerged in our own times.

Daniel Widener is a Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of Black Arts West and the book under discussion today:  Third Worlds Within: multiethnic movements and transnational solidarity, available through Duke University Press. Taking their cues from the book’s introduction, titled “The Dream of a Common Language: Afterlives of U.S. Thirdworldism,” Ferg...

Erika Lee, this year’s Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions at Cambridge University, Bae Family Professor of History, and Radcliffe Alumnae Professor at Harvard University, joins Fergus Selsdon Games and Sam Lanevi—both PhD candidates here at Cambridge—to discuss her upcoming work  Reclaiming Lost Histories of Asian America. Topics include toppling statues, the problems surrounding...

Arianne Sedef Urus, Assistant Professor of Early American History and Fellow at Christ's College, Cambridge, joins Megan Renoir and Hugh Wood to discuss cod fisheries, early modern empires, and Indigenous expropriation through the commons.

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 NB this episode contains reference to outdated and offensive language.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.

Tune in for Latinx visual culture, New York's alternative 'artworlds' of the 1970s, Black Atlantic women artists and the nature of canonisation. Prof. Stephanie Lewthwaite is Associate Professor in American History (Faculty of Arts) at the University of Nottingham

Dr. Joanna Cohen, Reader in American History at Queen Mary University of London, invites Fergus and Rob to consider some major problems in nineteenth century legal history and the history of capitalism. A lot of our discussion turns on the meaning of 'sympathy' in historical analysis.

Dr. Lewis Defrates discusses his paper "Neutrality by Absence: The Selective Repatriation of Americans at the Beginning of the First World War." The paper describes how the U.S. government rushed to extract its citizens, ordered by social category, from the crisis rapidly unfolding across Europe. The paper promises to reshape our understanding of the relationship between geopolitics, citizenship,...

Prof. Nick Guyatt, Caleb Woodall, and Hugh Wood discuss Nick's role as editor of the upcoming Oxford Illustrated History of the United States. We discuss the history and culture wars, the narratives that surround the American past, and the difficult political terrain the contemporary historian must navigate.

Richard J. M. Blackett, Andrew Jackson Professor of History at Vanderbilt University, joins Fergus and Shea to discuss the largely forgotten abolitionist Samuel Ringgold Ward.

Dr. Grace Mallon - Kinder Junior Research Fellow in Atlantic History, and fellow of University College, Oxford - joins Jasmin Bath and Hugh Wood to discuss the peculiarities and practicalities of federalism in the Early Republic period.

Prof. Andrew Preston discusses the causes and implications of the American invasion and occupation of Iraq with Fergus and Hugh.

Prof. Daddis joins Caleb Woodall and Fergus Selsdon Games, both PhD candidates here at Cambridge, to discuss his forthcoming work Faith and Fear: America's Relationship with War in the Modern Era. We discuss power, gender, and America's faith in the transformative capacity of conflict.

For the final episode before Easter break, Dr. Meg Jacobs and Caleb Woodall join Hugh Wood to discuss the New Deal's Agricultural Adjustment Agency. We cover topics such as collectivism, coercion, and the saving of American capitalism. As noted in the introduction, there won't be any new episodes until mid-May. Until then, stay well, and thanks for tuning in this term!

This week, Prof. Emily West, from Reading University, and Meg Roberts, a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge, join Hugh Wood to discuss Prof. West's paper, "Enslaved Women and the Duality of Feeding in the Antebellum South." Here's a link to Prof. West's article on wet-nursing: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44783893, and here's a link to BRANCH: https://branchuk.wordpress.com/ We hope you...

This week, Prof. Sophie White and Will Johnson, an MPhil here at Cambridge, join Hugh Wood to discuss Prof. White's paper, "His Master's Grace": Extra-Judicial Violence in Atlantic Slave Societies." Here are the links to the project and works mentioned in the introduction: the digital humanities project, https://oieahc.wm.edu/digital-projects/oi-reader/ ; an edited collection, Hearing Enslaved Voi...

This week, Dr. Robert Lee and Megan Renoir join Hugh Wood to discuss indigenous dispossession, institution building, and the complexities of post-revolutionary governing. Here's a link to Dr. Lee's prizewinning work on Land Grab Universities: https://www.landgrabu.org/. Thanks for tuning in and we hope  you enjoy!

Dr. Emily Brady - the Broadbent Junior Research Fellow at Christ Church College, Oxford - joins Marie Puysségur and Hugh Wood to discuss her work on African American Women photographers in the long civil rights movement. Here's a link to an article containing some of the photographs we discuss today: (https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2020/feb/01/civil-rights-photographer-doris-derb...

This week, Prof. Bruce J. Schulman, discusses some research drawn from his current book project, a monumental volume of the Oxford History of the United States, covering the period 1896-1929 . We're joined by Eric Wycoff-Rogers, who's just submitted their PhD on gender and sex relations in the first decades of the 20th century. 

For the first episode of 2023 (re-uploaded due to a technical error!), we're joined by Dr. Caitlin Harvey, an early career research fellow at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. Alongside Caitlin, we're joined by Rob O'Sullivan, a PhD candidate at Sidney Sussex and historian of Irish identity in the nineteenth century United States. Be on the lookout for Caitlin's upcoming book, Bricks and Mortar Boar...