Heartland History

John Nelson - Muddy Ground: Native Peoples, Chicago's Portage, and the Transformation of a Continent by Midwestern History Association

Dr. Melissa Ford joins us to discuss her new book A Brick and a Bible: Black Women's Activism in the Midwest During the Great Depression, published by Southern Illinois University Press.

Ashley Howard - What to the "Other" is the Midwest? by Midwestern History Association

Jon Lauck discussed his most recent book, The Good Country: A History of the American Midwest, 1800-1900.

Dr. Alonzo Ward is an assistant professor of history at Eastern Illinois University. He focuses on African American history in the Midwest during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as the general history of race and ethnicity in the United States. Specifically, he researches African American labor history in Illinois in conjunction with the larger labor movement of the late nine...

Writer Steven Moore discusses his recent collection essays, The Distance from Slaughter County: Lessons from Flyover Country, recently published at the University of North Carolina Press.

Dr. Christopher Ali is the Pioneers Chair in Telecommunications and Professor of Telecommunications in the Bellisario College of Communications at Penn State. His research interests include media and telecommunications policy and regulation, broadband policy, critical political economy, critical geography, comparative media systems, qualitative research methods, media localism and local news. In t...

Dr. Fernández-Jones discusses her research which appeared in an edited collection titled, Building Sustainable Worlds: Latinx Placemaking in the Midwest. She also discusses her forthcoming book, Making the MexiRican City: Migration, Placemaking, and Activism in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Both projects were published by University of Illinois Press.

Dr. Kai Bosworth discusses his book, Pipeline Populism: Grassroots Environmentalism in the Twenty-First Century which was recently published by the University of Minnesota Press.

Dr. Sasha Maria Suarez, an assistant professor of history at UW-Madison talks about her latest essay "Indigenizing Minneapolis: Building American Indian Community Infrastructure in the Mid-Twentieth Century,” which appears in Indian Cities: Histories of Indigenous Urbanism, published by the University of Oklahoma Press. From the publisher: "From ancient metropolises like Pueblo Bonito and Tenochti...

Camden joins Drs. Andrew Klumpp, Pamela-Riney Kehrberg, and Rebecca Conard for a wide-ranging conversation about regionalism, state and local history, and a recent issue of The Annals of Iowa. If you are interested in learning more about The Annals of Iowa, previous issues are available here: https://pubs.lib.uiowa.edu/annals-of-iowa/issues/

Camden and Phil have a wide-ranging conversation about the Midwest as a place and as an idea, focusing particuarly on Phil's lastest book Midwest Futures available from Belt Publishing (https://beltpublishing.com/products/midwest-futures). From the Publisher: The Midwest: Is it middle? Or is it Western? As Phil Christman writes in this idiosyncratic, critically acclaimed essay collection, these an...

Camden and Dr. Benjamin Park discuss Dr. Park's book "Kingdom of Nauvoo: The Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier." From the Publisher: In Kingdom of Nauvoo, Benjamin E. Park draws on newly available sources to re-create the founding and destruction of the Mormon city of Nauvoo. On the banks of the Mississippi in Illinois, the early Mormons built a religious utopia, establi...

Guest, Dr. Brandon Ward who is the author of the recent study "Living Detroit Environmental Activism in an Age of Urban Crisis" (Routledge 2021) has a wide-ranging conversation with Camden about the ways environmental concerns were inseparable from issues related to housing, civil rights, suburbanization, organized labor, and deindustrialization in Detroit. Dr. Ward also draws attention to the opp...

This episode, Camden sits down with Edward E. Curtis IV who is the William M. and Gail M. Plater Chair of Liberal Arts & Professor of Religious Studies at IUPUI. Dr. Curtis discusses his most recent book, Muslims of the Heartland: How Syrian Immigrants Made a Home in the American Midwest (New York University Press). From the publisher: "The American Midwest is often thought of as uniformly white,...

On this edition of Heartland History, Camden is joined by Dr. Molly Rozum of the University of South Dakota to discuss her new book Grasslands Grown: Creating Place on the U.S. Northern Plains and Canadian Prairies. From the University of Nebraska Press: "In Grasslands Grown Molly P. Rozum explores the two related concepts of regional identity and sense of place by examining a single North America...

This episode, Camden sits down with Dr. Lynne Heasley, Professor of Environment and Sustainability at WMU to discuss her new book "The Accidental Reef and Other Ecological Odysseys in the Great Lakes" (2021). Dr. Heasley's book is available through Michigan State University Press https://msupress.org/9781611864076/the-accidental-reef-and-other-ecological-odysseys-in-the-great-lakes/ or your local...

In this episode, Camden has a conversation with Professor Kristy Nabhan-Warren, who is the V.O. and Elizabeth Kahl Figge Chair in Catholic Studies Departments of Religious Studies and Gender, Women's and Sexuality Studies at the University of Iowa, about her latest published research, "Meat Packing America: How Migration, Work, and Faith Unite and Divide the Heartland" (2021). The book is availabl...

Heartland History is back! We are thrilled to host a conversation with guest Dr. Dana Caldemeyer, Associate Professor of History at South Georgia State College. Dr. Caldemeyer talks with our new host Dr. Camden Burd about her new book "Union Renegades: Miners, Capitalism, and Organizing in the Gilded Age" (2021)published by the University of Illinois Press. Their conversation covers the tangled re...

Jillian Marie Jacklin of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of History interviews Sergio González who is the Assistant Professor of Latinx Studies in the Departments of History and of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at Marquette University. Jacklin and González discuss his 2017 book "Mexicans in Wisconsin" published by the Wisconsin Historical Society, the vital importance of stud...

Guest contributor Professor Katie Day Good of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio interviews Professor Kathryn Remlinger, author of Yooper Talk: Dialect as Identity in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, published by the University of Wisconsin Press (2017). Professor Remlinger — in addition to helpfully explaining what a “Yooper” is! — discusses her work with linguistic identity in Michigan’s Upper Peninsul...

For the 40th episode of the podcast, Jon talks with Liesl Olson about her new book published by Yale University Press, titled "Chicago Renaissance: Literature and Art in the Midwest Metropolis" (2017). Olson is the Director of Chicago Studies at the Newberry library and has taught at the University of Chicago, received fellowships from the National Endowment the Humanities, the American Council of...

Jon interviews Steve Paul, a former Kansas City Star reporter and the author of “Hemingway at Eighteen: The Pivotal Year That Launched an American Legend,” published this month by Chicago Review Press. Paul discusses his work researching Hemingway, learning more about his connections to the Kansas City Star, and the importance of the Midwest to Hemingway’s identity and writing. Steve Paul will be...

Jon talks with author Melissa Fraterrigo, whose latest book titled "Glory Days" was published by the University of Nebraska Press in September of 2017. In the interview, Fraterrigo discusses growing up (and later living) all across the Midwest, how she became an author, and her love of teaching writing and literature as the current Director and as the Founder of the Lafayette Writers' Studio in La...

One day away from Heartland History's one year anniversary, Jon talks about the background of the Iowa City Book Fair with John Kenyon, the Director of the Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature. They also discuss the festival this year, the literary past and present of Iowa City, and the importance of Iowa's designation as only one of twenty UNESCO Cities of Literature globally. The Iowa City Book F...