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Category: American Studies

February 28, 2025

The Constitution and US Democracy: A Reading List

As the first university press in the South, UNC Press pioneered in tackling issues of the day through the honest, and sometimes gritty, lens of reality, in order to challenge the status quo in a historically diverse and complex region. Our association with the oldest public university in the nation inspires in us a commitment to bring new and established peer-reviewed research… Continue Reading The Constitution and US Democracy: A Reading List

Categories American History/American Studies/Civil War/Colonial, Revolutionary Era & Early American History/UNC Press News
February 19, 2025

Q&A With Casey Nichols

This Black History Month we’re highlighting Black stories and amplifying Black voices. The following is a Q&A with Casey D. Nichols, assistant professor of history at Texas State University and author of Poverty Rebels: Black and Brown Protest in Post–Civil Rights America publishing next month, but available for pre-order now. What led you to write Poverty Rebels: Black and Brown Protest… Continue Reading Q&A With Casey Nichols

Categories African American Studies/American Studies/Latino Studies/UNC Press News
January 14, 2025

New This Week: January 14th

Publishing this week we have a new book in our LatinX Histories series that traces how our dual appetite for Latinx food and Latinx food labor has evolved from the World War II era to the COVID-19 pandemic, a biography of Violeta Parra — a Chilean musician and artist that was the first Latin American to have a solo exhibition at the Museum of Decorative Arts… Continue Reading New This Week: January 14th

Categories American Studies/Latin American & Caribbean Studies/New Books
December 17, 2024

New This Week: December 17th

From the bustling ports of Lisbon to the coastal inlets of the Bight of Benin to the vibrant waterways of Bahia, Black mariners were integral to every space of the commercial South Atlantic. Publishing today, Captive Cosmopolitans reveals a new history of South Atlantic slavery centered on subaltern commercial and cultural exchange. Keep scrolling to learn more or check out everything… Continue Reading New This Week: December 17th

Categories American Studies
October 15, 2024

New This Week: October 15th

Another week, another batch of new books publishing. Today we have books spanning topics on segregation scholarships in the US south, teen pop culture at the turn of the twenty-first-century, and North Carolina Politics. Find your next favorite read among these new titles or browse our Hot Off The Press page to see everything new this month. A Forgotten Migration: Black Southerners,… Continue Reading New This Week: October 15th

Categories African American Studies/American Studies/New Books/North Carolina/Political Science
September 11, 2024

Memorializing 9/11: An Excerpt from “Divided by Terror”

Today, 23 years after the attacks on 9/11, we’re reflecting back to some of the earliest commemorations in New York City with this excerpt from Divided by Terror: American Patriotism after 9/11 by John Bodnar. You can also read a Q&A with John Bodnar and Executive Editor, Debbie Gershenowitz here. New York City The earliest commemorations of the terrorist attacks on… Continue Reading Memorializing 9/11: An Excerpt from “Divided by Terror”

Categories American Studies/Excerpts/Political Science
November 30, 2023

Nontraditional Career, Unconventional History

The following is a guest post by Aimee Loiselle, author of Beyond Norma Rae: How Puerto Rican and Southern White Women Fought for a Place in the American Working Class, which tells a history of women industrial workers in struggles over working conditions and pop culture in the late-twentieth century. Beyond Norma Rae is now available wherever books are sold. The successful publication… Continue Reading Nontraditional Career, Unconventional History

Categories American Studies/Guest Bloggers/Labor Studies
November 20, 2023

Movies Are Not Mirrors

The following is a guest post by Aimee Loiselle, author of Beyond Norma Rae: How Puerto Rican and Southern White Women Fought for a Place in the American Working Class, which tells a history of women industrial workers in struggles over working conditions and pop culture in the late-twentieth century. Beyond Norma Rae is now available wherever books are sold.… Continue Reading Movies Are Not Mirrors

Categories American Studies/Guest Bloggers/Labor Studies
November 14, 2023

New Books This Week

It’s Tuesday which means we have new books that are officially on-sale wherever books are sold! You can also see our list of everything new this month on our Hot Off the Press page and you can sign up for our monthly eNews to get updates in your inbox about new books, news, promotions and more. Boardinghouse Women: How Southern Keepers, Cooks, Nurses,… Continue Reading New Books This Week

Categories African American Studies/American Studies/Labor Studies/Latin American & Caribbean Studies/Literature/Women's Studies
November 8, 2023

New This Week

Another week, another list of new books! Check out these new books that are now available wherever books are sold. Plus see everything new this month on our Hot Off the Press page. You can also sign up for our monthly eNews so you can get updates on new releases and news on what’s happening at UNC Press. Southern Lights: 75 Years of the… Continue Reading New This Week

Categories American Studies/Islamic Studies/Literature/Southern/UNC Press News
November 6, 2023

A Political History of Policing in Pre-1930s New York City: An Excerpt from “Gotham’s War within a War”

The following is an excerpt from Gotham’s War Within a War: Policing and the Birth of Law-and-Order Liberalism in World War II–Era New York City by Emily Brooks which is available now wherever books are sold. Contemporary popular discourse in the United States understands urban policing solely through a lens of crime. This formulation fundamentally misconstrues the history of policing… Continue Reading A Political History of Policing in Pre-1930s New York City: An Excerpt from “Gotham’s War within a War”

Categories American Studies/Excerpts/Law / Legal History
August 4, 2023

Faith in Democracy: An Excerpt from “Public Confessions”

The following is an excerpt from Public Confessions: The Religious Conversions That Changed American Politics by Rebecca L. Davis, now available in paperback wherever books are sold. “A sterling history of mid-20th-century religious conversions and the social issues surrounding them. . . . This impressive work captures a fraught period in American political and religious history with a clear eye… Continue Reading Faith in Democracy: An Excerpt from “Public Confessions”

Categories American Studies/Excerpts/Political Science/Religion
December 9, 2022

Defending the Arctic Refuge: Introducing a Public History Website

Many thanks to NiCHE for allowing us to reblog this blog post by Finis Dunaway, author of Defending the Arctic Refuge: A Photographer, an Indigenous Nation, and a Fight for Environmental Justice. You can explore the Defending the Arctic Refuge website here. If I were to tell you that in the 1980s a group of amateur activists in California put… Continue Reading Defending the Arctic Refuge: Introducing a Public History Website

Categories American Studies/Canadian Studies/Environmental Studies/Native Amer./Indigenous Studies/Public Policy
November 4, 2022

2022 American Studies Association Annual Meeting

UNC Press is excited to once again be exhibiting in-person at the American Studies Association Annual Meeting! We hope you’ll stop by booth 311/313 to say hello to editor Andreina Fernandez and to browse our titles on display! If you can’t join us in-person, you can always visit our virtual booth! Congratulations to Juliana Hu Pegues! Space-Time Colonialism won the… Continue Reading 2022 American Studies Association Annual Meeting

Categories American Studies/UNC Press News
November 1, 2022

Global Christianity and the Cold War

The following is an excerpt from Global Faith, Worldly Power: Evangelical Internationalism and U.S. Empire edited by John Corrigan, Melani McAlister, Axel R. Schäfer. Global Christianity and the Cold War The military and economic footprint of the U.S. abroad expanded rapidly after World War II. The growth of evangelical mission and humanitarian aid activities needs to be viewed in this context. The… Continue Reading Global Christianity and the Cold War

Categories American Studies/Excerpts/Religion
August 23, 2022

We The Dead – On Sale Now

We The Dead: Preserving Data at the End of the World by Brian Michael Murphy, is available now wherever books and ebooks are sold. Locked away in refrigerated vaults, sanitized by gas chambers, and secured within bombproof caverns deep under mountains are America’s most prized materials: the ever-expanding collection of records that now accompany each of us from birth to… Continue Reading We The Dead – On Sale Now

Categories American Studies/Media Studies
August 22, 2022

The Emergence of Russian America on Alaska’s Coast

The following is an excerpt from Converging Empires: Citizens and Subjects in the North Pacific Borderlands, 1867–1945 by Andrea Geiger. Russian America In 1783, four decades after Vitus Bering’s first foray along the Aleutian Islands in 1741, Russia established what would become the center of its commercial operations in “Aliaska” on what Russians called Kodiak Island midway along the southern… Continue Reading The Emergence of Russian America on Alaska’s Coast

Categories American Studies/Canadian Studies/Excerpts/Native Amer./Indigenous Studies
June 20, 2022

Celebrate Juneteenth by Reflecting on Enslavement in the American South

Happy Juneteenth(observation day)! As we take today to commemorate the end of slavery in the US, we are sharing an excerpt from Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South by Stephanie M. H. Camp. 1 A GEOGRAPHY OF CONTAINMENT The Bondage of Space and Time THE PRINCIPLES OF RESTRAINT At the heart of the process of enslavement was… Continue Reading Celebrate Juneteenth by Reflecting on Enslavement in the American South

Categories Africa & African Diaspora/African American History/African American Studies/American Studies/Southern
April 22, 2022

The Epic Political Battle Over the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

Happy Earth Day 2022 The following excerpt is taken from Finis Dunaway’s Defending the Arctic Refuge: A Photographer, an Indigenous Nation, and a Fight for Environmental Justice, winner the 2022 Spur Award for Contemporary Nonfiction by the Western Writers of America. I don’t make a habit of going to funerals, especially for people I’ve never met. So I feel a… Continue Reading The Epic Political Battle Over the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

Categories American Studies/Environmental Studies/Native Amer./Indigenous Studies
April 21, 2022

From Unquestioned Obedience to Disintegrating Abeyance: Children’s Toys and U.S.’s Racial Order in the Late 19th Century

The following guest blog post by Mahshid Mayar, author of Citizens and Rulers of the World: The American Child and the Cartographic Pedagogies of Empire, is an edited version of an essay originally published under the title “Verbs of Violence 19th-Century Jigsaw Puzzles, Otherness, and American Childhood” in the Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth, and is reproduced… Continue Reading From Unquestioned Obedience to Disintegrating Abeyance: Children’s Toys and U.S.’s Racial Order in the Late 19th Century

Categories American Studies/UNC Press News