Drafting the Past

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...

In this episode, host Kate Carpenter speaks with the brilliant and delightful Dr. Kellie Carter Jackson . Dr. Carter Jackson is a professor of Africana Studies at Wellesley College, and a prolific speaker and writer, with essays everywhere from The New York Times to the Atlantic and Los Angeles Times , and appearances in documentaries and countless podcasts and news programs. She is executive prod...

For this episode Kate Carpenter interviews Dr. Margaret O'Mara. Margaret is a professor of modern American history at the University of Washington, and the author of multiple books, including Cities of Knowledge: Cold War Science and the Search for the Next Silicon Valley and Pivotal Tuesdays: Four Elections that Shaped the Twentieth Century . Her most recent book is The Code: Silicon Valley and t...

In this episode, I was thrilled to welcome historian—and fellow Missourian—Kimberly Harper to the show. I am especially delighted by this episode because I get many requests to feature guests who have written history books while off of the tenure track or outside of academia, and Kim is a great example of that. I find guests for the show in a lot different ways – sometimes they are people I am a l...

In this episode, Kate welcomes historian Dr. Nathan Perl-Rosenthal. Nathan is a professor history at the University of Southern California. His first book, Citizen Sailors: Becoming American in the Age of Revolution , came out in 2015. His new book just came out this month, February 2024, from Basic Books. It's called The Age of Revolutions and the Generations Who Made It , and it tells the histor...

For Episode 40 , Kate Carpenter is joined by Dr. Grace Elizabeth Hale . Grace is the Commonwealth Professor of American Studies and History at the University of Virginia, and the author of four books. Her two most recent are Cool Town: How Athens, Georgia, Launched Alternative Music and Changed American Culture , which was published by UNC Press in 2020, and In the Pines: A Lynching, a Lie, a Reck...

Welcome back to the third season of Drafting the Past! I'm thrilled about the lineup of historians that I'll get to bring to you this year. I know you're going to love them. That includes today's guest, Dr. Benjamin Park . Ben is an associate professor of history at Sam Houston State University, and the author of three books. His first two were American Nationalisms: Imagining Union in the Age of...

At the end of the year, a flurry of "best books of the year books hit publications. For the last episode of 2023, I wanted to try something a little different on Drafting the Past. Rather than come up with my own best books list, I asked listeners to call in and leave a message with the best history book they read in 2023 (it didn't have to be published this year). I loved hearing about the books...

In this episode, Kate spoke with historian Dr. Martha Hodes . Dr. Hodes is a professor of history at New York University and the author of multiple previous books focused on the nineteenth century, including The Sea Captain's Wife: A True Story of Love, Race, and War in the Nineteenth Century , and Mourning Lincoln , which won multiple awards and was longlisted for the National Book Award. Her mos...

For this episode I was lucky enough to speak with a historian and writer I have long admired, Dr. Catherine McNeur . Catherine's first book, Taming Manhattan: Environmental Battles in the Antebellum City , first came out in 2014, and it is one of my favorite environmental histories. So I was more than a little excited to learn about her new book out this year, Mischievous Creatures: The Forgotten...

For this episode, host Kate Carpenter interviews Dr. Tanisha C. Ford. Tanisha is a writer, historian, and professor of history at the City University of New York Graduate Center. She is the author of three books and many articles on subjects at the intersection of politics and culture, and especially on Black fashion and social movements. Her first book, Liberated Threads: Black Women, Style, and...

In this episode Kate is joined by historian Dr. Bruce Dorsey . Bruce is a professor of history at Swarthmore College. In 2002, he published his first book, Reforming Men and Women: Gender in the Antebellum City , and he is also the co-editor of the book Crosscurrents in American Culture . His new book is called Murder in a Mill Town: Sex, Faith, and the Crime that Captivated a Nation . In it, Bruc...