Posted by
Ellen on
2 September 2010, 9:47 am
We welcome a guest post today from Susan Nance, author of How the Arabian Nights Inspired the American Dream, 1790-1835. Americans have always shown a fascination with the people, customs, and legends of the “East,” such as the stories of the Arabian Nights, the performances of Arab belly dancers and acrobats, the feats of turban-wearing [...] Read more »
Posted by
MHHunt on
19 August 2010, 10:44 am
Barack Obama’s Afghanistan commanders are something else. First, they promoted a highly debatable counter-insurgency strategy. Then, despite the numerous and cogent contemporary critiques, they got the president to buy into their particular brand of wishful thinking, and they got from him the additional troops supposedly needed for success. They have since failed to deliver. There [...] Read more »
Filed under American History, Current Events, Guest Bloggers, Michael H. Hunt, Military History, Military Studies, Politics.
Tagged afghanistan, barack obama, general mcchrystal, general petraeus, hamid karzai, michael mullen, robert gates, vietnam
Posted by
MHHunt on
5 August 2010, 10:48 am
Developments over the last month or so have put the U.S. commitment in Afghanistan under a dark cloud. The McChrystal affair and the WikiLeaks revelations are symptomatic of deeper troubles: the rapid bankruptcy of counterinsurgency, a surge in U.S. casualties, the persistently problematic role of Pakistan, the continued immobility of the Karzai regime, the sluggish [...] Read more »
Posted by
Ellen on
28 July 2010, 2:38 pm
We welcome a guest post today from Jennifer Brier, author of Infectious Ideas: U.S. Political Responses to the AIDS Crisis. When the Obama administration announced a new HIV/AIDS strategy, we asked Brier to unpack the news and help give historical perspective to the new plan.–ellen Reading President Obama’s new HIV/AIDS strategy, released on July 13, [...] Read more »
Filed under Current Events, Gay / Lesbian Studies, Guest Bloggers, Health / Medicine, Politics, Public Policy.
Tagged aids policy, barack obama, hiv/aids, homophobia, jennifer brier, pepfar, usaid
Posted by
BLMKelley on
13 July 2010, 11:35 am
I have been frustrated by this week’s back-and-forth between the Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert and civil rights veteran Jesse Jackson. Don’t get me wrong; Dan Gilbert’s letter smacked of grating paternalism; he spoke of James like a petulant child, rather than a man who had more than fulfilled his seven-year contract. His tone was [...] Read more »
Posted by
MHHunt on
2 July 2010, 8:59 am
There is good reason to pity the poor historian, who has been tested especially severely during the recent McChrystal-Obama imbroglio as the eruption of historical parallels and lessons have ranged from the wrong-headed to the off-kilter. Read more »
Filed under American History, Current Events, Guest Bloggers, Michael H. Hunt, Military History, Politics.
Tagged afghanistan, general arthur macarthur, general mcchrystal, henry kissinger, korean war, phillippines, vietnam war
Posted by
Ellen on
22 June 2010, 1:38 pm
Until very recently, the term “feminist” was used by those on the right only as a negative descriptor of someone who would invariably be a political foe. Devoted feminists have struggled to set the word free from the negative connotations and reclaim the label as a source of pride, with mixed results, especially among younger [...] Read more »
Filed under African American Studies, American History, Current Events, Gender Studies, Politics, UNC Press Authors, Women's Studies.
Tagged carly fiorina, conservative feminists, feminism, lisa levenstein, nikki haley, Republican feminists, Republican Women, Sarah Palin, social conservatives, women in high office, women politicians, women's movement
Posted by
MHHunt on
9 June 2010, 1:47 pm
In the world of U.S. foreign policy, the release of a new National Security Strategy is a big deal. This congressionally mandated exercise offers an opportunity for the executive to grapple with basic issues, and it may even herald the birth of a “doctrine” (as it did for George W. Bush in 2002). The Obama [...] Read more »
Filed under American History, Current Events, Guest Bloggers, Michael H. Hunt, Politics.
Tagged al qaeda, anti-muslim sentiment, barack obama, bush doctrine, diplomacy, george w. bush, globalization, hamas, hezbullah, hizbullah, islamist, jimmy carter, national security, national security strategy, taliban
Posted by
Ellen on
8 June 2010, 9:14 am
In his newly released book Zeal for Zion: Christians, Jews, and the Idea of the Promised Land, Shalom Goldman argues that Jewish Zionism was influenced by–and cannot be understood in isolation from–Christian culture generally and Christian Zionist culture specifically. Shedding light on the deep and interrelated roots of Christian-Jewish relations, fraught with tension and ambivalence, [...] Read more »
Filed under Current Events, Middle Eastern Studies, Politics, Religion, UNC Press Authors.
Tagged american jewish organizations, anti-zionist, arab-israeli relations, christian zionism, daily alert, elliot abrams, freedom flotilla, gaza, joe leiberman, michael oren, non-zionist, sean hannity, shalom goldman, west bank, zionism
It seems as though Rand Paul, the Republican candidate for the United States Senate from Kentucky, son of Texas congressman Ron Paul, and self-proclaimed representative of the Tea Party movement, has some serious difficulty explaining his approach to questions of race and civil rights. During an appearance on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show, Paul started by [...] Read more »
Filed under African American Studies, American History, Blair L. M. Kelley, Civil Rights, Columnists, Current Events, Politics.
Tagged 1964 civil rights act, anti-separate coach movement, civil rights movement, First Amendment, government takeover, instrusions on private business, integration, kentucky senate primary, march on washington, martin luther king, rachel maddow, rand paul, ron paul, segregation, tipton miller, woolworth's sit-in
Posted by
Ellen on
5 May 2010, 1:10 pm
When Janey Comes Marching Home: Portraits of Women Combat Veterans is more than a book we’ve just published — it’s a multimedia project based on interviews with dozens of female military veterans of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The book juxtaposes 48 photographs by Sascha Pflaeging with oral histories collected by Laura Browder to [...] Read more »
Filed under American History, American Studies, Biography / Autobiography, Current Events, Gender Studies, Military History, Women's Studies.
Tagged afghanistan, Iraq, Laura Browder, sascha flaeging, women combat veterans, women in the military
Posted by
Ellen on
4 May 2010, 9:14 am
Joe Biden recently announced some changes to Title IX policies to close a loophole opened up by the Bush administration in 2005. Glad to see Title IX taken seriously by this administration. There’s still a ways to go to bring full equality to women’s sports, however. Jennifer Etnier (author of Bring Your “A” Game: A [...] Read more »
Filed under Current Events, Sports, UNC Press Authors, Women's Studies.
Tagged coaching opportunities for women, female athletes, Olympics, sports opportunities for women, title 9, title ix, title nine, women athletes
Posted by
Ellen on
30 April 2010, 9:15 am
When we got wind of Michael Steele’s recent comments about the Republican Party continuing a “Southern Strategy” for the past 40 years, we turned to an expert on southern politics for insight into Steele’s allusion to the Nixon-era strategy of racial exclusion. Michael Perman is author of Pursuit of Unity: A Political History of the [...] Read more »
Filed under African American Studies, American History, Civil Rights, Current Events, Guest Bloggers, History, Politics.
Tagged Michael Perman, Political History, Political Science, Pursuit of Unity, Souther Studies
Posted by
Ellen on
27 April 2010, 8:53 am
We welcome a guest post today from Anne E. Marshall, author of Creating a Confederate Kentucky: The Lost Cause and Civil War Memory in a Border State, which we’ll publish in December 2010. The book traces the development of a Confederate identity in Kentucky between 1865 and 1925 that belied the fact that Kentucky never [...] Read more »
Filed under African American Studies, American History, Civil War, Current Events, Guest Bloggers, History, Politics.
Tagged civil rights workers, civil war history, confederacy, confederate history month, confederate states of america, haley barbour, ku klux klan murders, lost cause, mason-dixon line, Mississippi, neshoba country mississippi, Ronald Reagan, secession, slavery, states' rights, tea party, Virginia, virginia governor robert mcdonnell
Posted by
Ellen on
16 April 2010, 8:17 am
From Shane J. Maddock, author of Nuclear Apartheid: The Quest for American Atomic Supremacy from World War II to the Present, we welcome this guest post addressing Barack Obama’s most recent nuclear initiatives. If you missed Maddock’s January guest post, “The Delicate Art of Nuclear Jujutsu,” go back and take a look.–ellen President Barack Obama [...]
Filed under Current Events, Guest Bloggers, Military Studies, Politics, Public Policy, UNC Press Authors.
Tagged barack obama, bombers, bombs, chemical attack, chile, dmitry medvedev, george w. bush, india, Iran, israel, no-first-use pledge, nobel peace prize, nonproliferation, north korea, nuclear attack, nuclear defense policy, nuclear power production, nuclear proliferation, nuclear retaliation, nuclear security, nuclear-free, nucular, nukes, pakistan, pyongyang, start treaty, tehran, terrorists, ukraine, vladimir putin, warheads
