Category: American Studies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Women’s History Month 2022 Reading List (Curated by Helen Kyriakoudes)

Happy Women’s History Month! In celebration of this historical month, we’ll be sharing reading lists curated by our staff featuring all authors who identify as women. Today we’re sharing a list from our Publicity Assistant Helen Kyriakoudes. Click here to see the previously shared lists and learn more about how Women’s History Month came about. If you’re interested in purchasing any of these books,… Continue Reading Women’s History Month 2022 Reading List (Curated by Helen Kyriakoudes)

A Photobiography of A Time and Place

The following is an excerpt from O.N. Pruitt’s Possum Town: Photographing Trouble and Resilience in the American South, written by professor Berkley Hudson. Photographer O. N. Pruitt (1891–1967) was for some forty years the de facto documentarian of Lowndes County, Mississippi, and its county seat, Columbus–known to locals as “Possum Town.” His body of work recalls many FSA photographers, but… Continue Reading A Photobiography of A Time and Place

2022 Appalachian Studies Association Annual Meeting

We hope you’ll visit our virtual booth for the Appalachian Studies Association annual meeting! There you can browse our new & recent titles and connect with editor Lucas Church. New from UNC Press Movie-Made Appalachia: History, Hollywood, and the Highland South by John C. Inscoe Otto Wood, the Bandit: The Freighthopping Thief, Bootlegger, and Convicted Murderer behind the Appalachian Ballads… Continue Reading 2022 Appalachian Studies Association Annual Meeting

Women’s History Month 2022 Reading List (Curated by Sonya Bonczek)

Happy Women’s History Month! In celebration of this historical month, we’ll be sharing reading lists curated by our staff featuring all authors who identify as women. Today we’re sharing a list from Sonya Bonczek, our Director of Publicity. Click here to see the previously shared lists and learn more about how Women’s History Month came about. If you’re interested in purchasing any of these… Continue Reading Women’s History Month 2022 Reading List (Curated by Sonya Bonczek)

Hot Off The Press: March 2022

We’re publishing some great books this month! Read below to learn more about these exceptional titles. Don’t forget to enter code 01DAH40 at checkout for some savings! You can save 40% on ALL UNC Press print books and if your order totals $75 or more, the shipping is FREE! CITIZENS AND RULERS OF THE WORLD: THE AMERICAN CHILD AND THE… Continue Reading Hot Off The Press: March 2022

Women’s History Month 2022 Reading List (Curated by Debbie Gershenowitz)

Happy Women’s History Month! In celebration of this historical month, we’ll be sharing reading lists curated by our staff featuring all authors who identify as women. Today we’re sharing a list curated by one of our Executive Editors Debbie Gershenowitz. Last week we shared a list curated by Andreina Fernandez, one of our Acquisitions Assistants. Click here to check out Andreina’s… Continue Reading Women’s History Month 2022 Reading List (Curated by Debbie Gershenowitz)

University of Chicago Divinity School Presents An Evening with Rebecca Davis

Last month Rebecca Davis, professor and author of Public Confessions: The Religious Conversions That Changed American Politics, sat with assistant professor William Schultz for a conversation about her book; hosted by the University of Chicago Divinity School. Personal reinvention is a core part of the human condition. Yet in the mid-twentieth century, certain private religious choices became lightning rods for… Continue Reading University of Chicago Divinity School Presents An Evening with Rebecca Davis

Women’s History Month 2022 Reading List (Curated by Andreina Fernandez)

Happy Women’s History Month! Women’s History Month had its origins as a national celebration in 1981 when Congress passed Pub. L. 97-28 which authorized and requested the President to proclaim the week beginning March 7, 1982 as “Women’s History Week.” Throughout the next five years, Congress continued to pass joint resolutions designating a week in March as “Women’s History Week.” In… Continue Reading Women’s History Month 2022 Reading List (Curated by Andreina Fernandez)

Black History Month 2022 Reading List: Biographies

In celebration of Black History Month, we’ve chosen to publish a new reading list every week featuring only Black authors. The first reading list covered Black Resistance, the second covered the Black American experience and this week’s reading list centers biographies; telling the stories of a few vastly different lives lived under the Black identity umbrella. As mentioned in the… Continue Reading Black History Month 2022 Reading List: Biographies

Reimagining Africa: How Black Women Invented the Language of Soul in the 1950s

The following is an excerpt from Tanisha C. Ford’s Liberated Threads: Black Women, Style, and the Global Politics of Soul. From the civil rights and Black Power era of the 1960s through antiapartheid activism in the 1980s and beyond, black women have used their clothing, hair, and style not simply as a fashion statement but as a powerful tool of… Continue Reading Reimagining Africa: How Black Women Invented the Language of Soul in the 1950s

Left of Black web series featuring award-winning author and historian Tanisha C. Ford

In 2016, Tanisha C. Ford, author of Liberated Threads: Black Women, Style, and the Global Politics of Soul was featured on John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute’s Left of Black web series. Left of Black is a web series featuring interviews with Black Studies scholars created and hosted by James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of African and African American Studies Mark Anthony Neal. In this… Continue Reading Left of Black web series featuring award-winning author and historian Tanisha C. Ford

How Searching for Chex Mix during the Pandemic Heightened my Appreciation for Food Studies

The following is a guest blog post from Jennifer Jensen Wallach, author of Every Nation Has Its Dish: Black Bodies and Black Food in Twentieth-Century America. Jennifer Jensen Wallach’s nuanced history of black foodways across the twentieth century challenges traditional narratives of “soul food” as a singular style of historical African American cuisine. Wallach investigates the experiences and diverse convictions… Continue Reading How Searching for Chex Mix during the Pandemic Heightened my Appreciation for Food Studies