Paul Hardin Kapp is Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This interview is based on his new book, Heritage and Hoop Skirts: How Natchez Created the Old South (University Press of Mississippi, 2022). JF: What...
cultural history
The Author’s Corner with Catherine V. Bateson
Catherine V. Bateson is Associate Lecturer of American History and American Studies Chief Examiner at the University of Kent. This interview is based on her new book, Irish American Civil War Songs: Identity, Loyalty, and Nationhood (LSU Press, 2022). JF:...
The Author’s Corner with Kyle Mays
Kyle Mays is Assistant Professor of African American Studies, American Indian Studies, and History at the University of California, Los Angeles. This interview is based on his new book, City of Dispossessions: Indigenous Peoples, African Americans, and the Creation of...
The Author’s Corner with Sam Lebovic
Sam Lebovic is Associate Professor of History at George Mason University. This interview is based on his new book, A Righteous Smokescreen: Postwar America and the Politics of Cultural Globalization (University of Chicago Press, 2022). JF: What led you to...
The Author’s Corner with Kocku von Stuckrad
Kocku von Stuckrad is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Groningen. This interview is based on his new book, A Cultural History of the Soul: Europe and North America from 1870 to the Present (Columbia University Press, 2022)....
The Author’s Corner with Robert Gross
Robert A. Gross is Emeritus Draper Professor of Early American History at the University of Connecticut. This interview is based on his new book, The Transcendentalists and Their World (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021). JF: What led you to write The Transcendentalists...
The Author’s Corner with Richard Kagan
Richard Kagan is Academy Professor and Arthur O. Lovejoy Professor Emeritus of History at Johns Hopkins University. This interview is based on his new book, The Spanish Craze: America’s Fascination with the Hispanic World, 1779-1939 (University of Nebraska Press, 2019). JF: What led...
The Author’s Corner with Matthew Bowman
Matthew Bowman is associate professor of history at Henderson State University. This interview is based on his new book, Christian: The Politics of a Word in America (Harvard University Press, 2018). JF: What led you to write Christian: The Politics of a Word...
A Nice Intro to the Early American Book Trade
When I was writing The Way of Improvement Leads Home: Philip Vickers Fithian and the Rural Enlightenment in Early America I spent a lot of time reading scholarship on the book trade in early America. I was trying to trace the print...
An Interview with T. Jackson Lears
Over at the Politics/Talk podcast, Rutgers University historian James Livingston interviews his colleague: historian and public intellectual T. Jackson Lears. If you are interested in Lears’s work, the history of consumerism, American intellectual history, and academic biography this 2-part podcast...
America and the Ten Commandments
Oxford University Press blog is running an excerpt from Jenna Weissman Joselit‘s new book Set in Stone: America’s Embrace of the Ten Commandments. Here is a taste: Although we are told that Moses received the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai, their...
Take a History Course on Dolly Parton
Jacey Fortin of The New York Times reports on a history course at the University of Tennessee focused on the life and times of country singer Dolly Parton. The course is taught by historian Lynn Sacco, author of Unspeakable: Father-Daughter Incest...
The Author's Corner with Joanna Cohen
Joanna Cohen is a lecturer in the School of History at Queen Mary University of London. This interview is based on her new book, Luxurious Citizens: The Politics of Consumption in Nineteenth-Century America (Penn Press, 2017). JF: What led you...
The Author's Corner with Jeremy C. Young
Jeremy C. Young is Assistant Professor of History at Dixie State University in St. George, Utah. This interview is based on his new book, The Age of Charisma: Leaders, Followers, and Emotions in American Society, 1870-1940 (Cambridge University Press, 2017)....
A History of Christmas Cards
I heard Ellen Brown talking about the history of holiday cards the other day on The Takeaway and thought it would make for a nice Christmas Eve post here at The Way of Improvement Leads Home. Here is a taste of […]
Crowdsourcing Books on the Founding Fathers Using Gender and Cultural History
Historians took to Twitter yesterday to answer Cassandra Good‘s question: Seeking ideas on great books on founders using gender or cultural history #twitterstorians @thejuntoblog @lizcovart @Historiann @JohnFea1 — Cassandra Good (@CassAGood) September 1, 2015 //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js Here were some of the […]
The Author’s Corner with Robert M. Owens
Robert Owens is Associate Professor of Early American History at Wichita State University. This interview is based on his new book, Red Dreams, White Nightmares: Pan-Indian Alliances in the Anglo-American Mind (University of Oklahoma Press, March 2015). JF: What led you to write Red...
The Author’s Corner with Katherine Grandjean
Katherine Grandjean is Assistant Professor of History at Wellesley College. This interview is based on her new book, American Passage: The Communications Frontier in Early New England (Harvard University Press, January 2015). JF: What led you to write American Passage?KG: It was somewhat accidental. I’d...
The Author’s Corner with Sean P. Harvey
Sean Harvey is Assistant Professor of History at Seton Hall University. This interview is based on his new book Native Tongues: Colonialism and Race from Encounter to the Reservation (Harvard University Press, January 2015). JF: What led you to write Native Tongues: Colonialism and...
Philip Deloria Will Deliver Messiah College American Democracy Lecture
Philip Deloria We in the Messiah College History Department are thrilled to have Philip Deloria of the University Michigan on campus next week to deliver our annual American Democracy lecture. His talk is entitled “American Indians in the American Cultural...