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Author: Ellen C. Bush

January 6, 2014

Interview: Tom Eamon on North Carolina Politics

Today, there is a gap. Many metropolitan areas and university communities are booming and attract migrants from all over. But farming areas once reliant on tobacco and old textile towns are withering and face high unemployment. And textiles were a low wage industry to begin with. More recently, public employees have faced salary freezes. Economic problems are here to stay. Despite great progress in many areas, North Carolina is a captive of its past. Continue Reading Interview: Tom Eamon on North Carolina Politics

Categories Interviews/North Carolina/Politics
December 10, 2013

Video: Rebecca Sharpless on Cooking in Other Women’s Kitchens

A video of Rebecca Sharpless’s talk on the history of African American women cooks in white households in the South, given at the 16th annual Southern Foodways Symposium, October 2013. Video produced by the Southern Foodways Alliance. Continue Reading Video: Rebecca Sharpless on Cooking in Other Women’s Kitchens

Categories African American History/African American Studies/American History/Civil Rights/Cooking / Food/History/Southern Studies/Video/Women's Studies
December 9, 2013

Join Us as We Celebrate African American Music Trails of Eastern NC

Eastern North Carolina has produced some of the most transformative figures in the history of jazz, gospel and popular music. Among them are internationally renowned jazz pianists and composers Thelonious Monk from Rocky Mount and Billy Taylor from Greenville. African American Music Trails of Eastern North Carolina celebrates people, places and events in Eastern North Carolina, showcasing the music that… Continue Reading Join Us as We Celebrate African American Music Trails of Eastern NC

Categories African American History/African American Studies/American History/Events/History/Local Indy Booksellers/Music/North Carolina/Travel
December 5, 2013

The Best of Enemies: Durham History from Page to Stage

Durham’s ManBites Dog Theater hosts “The Best of Enemies,” a play based on the book by Osha Gray Davidson about the unlikely friendship between a poor white member of the KKK and a poor black civil rights activist in 1960s North Carolina. Continue Reading The Best of Enemies: Durham History from Page to Stage

Categories African American Studies/American History/Civil Rights/Events/History/North Carolina/Sociology/Southern Studies/Theatre & Performing Arts/Video
December 4, 2013

Jaime Amanda Martinez: Why Exactly are We Commemorating “Confederate Pensioners of Color”?

Eager to discuss African American participation in the Civil War, we are nonetheless troubled by the aura of Confederate nostalgia surrounding the ceremony, as well as the news coverage that (at least in the Charlotte-area press) seemed intent on calling the ten men Confederate soldiers or veterans. Continue Reading Jaime Amanda Martinez: Why Exactly are We Commemorating “Confederate Pensioners of Color”?

Categories African American History/African American Studies/American History/Author blog entry/Civil War/Guest Bloggers/History/North Carolina
November 26, 2013

Glenn David Brasher: A Historian’s Take on ’12 Years a Slave’

Everything you have heard about the film 12 Years a Slave is true; it is exceptionally well acted, gorgeously filmed, and brutally honest about antebellum slavery. There are moments that are extremely difficult to watch and this is as it should be, leaving audiences stunned into numbness. Film critics and historians alike have praised it as a watershed in the depiction of slavery in American cinema, and this is certainly true. Nevertheless, the film demonstrates that Hollywood has not yet fully caught up with current interpretations of slave life in the antebellum South. Continue Reading Glenn David Brasher: A Historian’s Take on ’12 Years a Slave’

Categories African American History/American History/Author blog entry/Civil War/Film/Guest Bloggers/History
November 22, 2013

50 Years Ago: Historians on the Legacies of JFK

Blair L. M. Kelley and Kathryn Cramer Brownell consider the assassination of JFK in the contexts of the civil rights movement, media spectacle, and shifting political structures. Continue Reading 50 Years Ago: Historians on the Legacies of JFK

Categories African American Studies/American History/American Studies/Civil Rights/History/Media Studies/Politics
November 21, 2013

Kathryn Shively Meier: Civil War Soldier Trauma in Unexpected Places

Soldiers on both sides pegged environmental circumstances as some of the most serious stressors of the war. Privates through non-commissioned officers, common soldiers rarely had traveled far from home before deploying. That meant the vast majority of them were transported to foreign environments that appeared extremely threatening based on popular notions of disease causation. Lacking conceptions of germ theory or insect-borne illness (theories developed in the 1870s and 80s respectively), mid-century Americans widely believed that a sudden change of location or weather and the air, water, and terrain of certain locales (particularly those of the South) caused life-threatening diseases, such as dysentery, malaria, and typhoid. It was clear to soldiers that disease claimed far more mortalities than combat; indeed, two-thirds of soldier deaths by war’s end would be from sickness rather than wounds. Nature appeared to be the soldiers’ fiercest enemy. Continue Reading Kathryn Shively Meier: Civil War Soldier Trauma in Unexpected Places

Categories American History/Author blog entry/Civil War/Environmental Studies/Guest Bloggers/Health / Medicine/History/Military History/Military Studies
November 15, 2013

University Press Week 2013: Blog Tour Day 5

University Press Week Blog Tour concludes today with posts on the theme of The Global Reach of University Presses. Today’s posts are from Princeton University Press, NYU Press, Johns Hopkins University Press, Columbia University Press, University of Wisconsin Press, Georgetown University Press, Yale University Press, and Indiana University Press. Continue Reading University Press Week 2013: Blog Tour Day 5

Categories Global Studies/The Book Biz/UNC Press News
November 14, 2013

University Press Week 2013: Blog Tour Day 4: Mark Simpson-Vos: Remembering Region

I’m convinced region matters more than ever. And indeed, we need university presses more than ever to work in concert with authors, booksellers, and reading communities to build conversations that scale from the local to the global and back again. Continue Reading University Press Week 2013: Blog Tour Day 4: Mark Simpson-Vos: Remembering Region

Categories North Carolina/Southern Studies/The Book Biz/UNC Press News
November 13, 2013

Interview: Mical Raz on poverty, mental health, and U.S. social policy

Poverty is often seen as a personal failure, whereas success is a mark of hard work; thus economic status serves a surrogate for individual self-worth, and not an indicator of society’s structure and its limitations. Poor men and women are still often portrayed in stereotypical terms as being lazy and unmotivated. Continue Reading Interview: Mical Raz on poverty, mental health, and U.S. social policy

Categories Health / Medicine/History/Interviews/Public Policy/Sociology
November 12, 2013

University Press Week 2013: Blog Tour Day 2

Day 2 of the blog tour for University Press Week focuses on the future of scholarly communication. See posts from Harvard University Press, Stanford University Press, University of Virginia Press, University of Texas Press, Duke University Press, University of Minnesota Press, and Temple University Press. Continue Reading University Press Week 2013: Blog Tour Day 2

Categories The Book Biz/UNC Press News
November 11, 2013

University Press Week 2013: Blog Tour Day 1

Today’s University Press Week Blog Tour theme is “Meet the Press,” with profiles of staff members from University Press of Colorado, University of Missouri Press, University of Hawai’i Press, McGill-Queens University Press, University of Illinois Press, Penn State University Press, and University Press of Florida. Continue Reading University Press Week 2013: Blog Tour Day 1

Categories The Book Biz/UNC Press News
November 8, 2013

Alex Lubin: Exhuming Yasser Arafat

Yasser Arafat has meant many things to many people over the course of his life. To some he is a freedom fighter, and throughout the world he is often depicted in posters alongside Che Guevara. To others he is a terrorist. To the Nobel Prize Committee he is a peace-maker. Arafat has had many lives, and his reputation has been exhumed numerous times over his life and now, after his death.

What often gets overlooked about Arafat and the PLO is the impact he and his movement had on a global third-world movement in general, and on the Black freedom movement in particular. Continue Reading Alex Lubin: Exhuming Yasser Arafat

Categories Author blog entry/Current Events/Guest Bloggers/History/Middle Eastern Studies/Politics