October 31, 2017
Infographic: Goat Castle Timeline
An overview and infographic timeline of a Depression-era murder, a Mississippi town’s national media attention, and racial injustice. Continue Reading Infographic: Goat Castle Timeline
October 9, 2017
Author Interview: Karen L. Cox, Goat Castle
“From the time I learned about Goat Castle and the real-life characters that inhabited it, I could see it as a film. Every person I’ve ever talked to about this book project has said, without fail, ‘This needs to be a movie.’” Continue Reading Author Interview: Karen L. Cox, Goat Castle
October 2, 2017
Douglas Hunter: Dighton Rock, Leif Eriksson, and the Origins of Scientific Racism
Today we welcome a guest post from Douglas Hunter, author of The Place of Stone: Dighton Rock and the Erasure of America’s Indigenous Past, on the contested history of Dighton Rock and it’s petroglyphs. Claimed by many to be the most frequently documented artifact in American archeology, Dighton Rock is a forty-ton boulder covered in petroglyphs in southern Massachusetts. First… Continue Reading Douglas Hunter: Dighton Rock, Leif Eriksson, and the Origins of Scientific Racism
September 23, 2017
Nicholas Grant: Apartheid South Africa and the 1957 Little Rock Crisis
Today we welcome a guest blog post from Nicholas Grant, author of Winning Our Freedoms Together: African Americans and Apartheid, 1945–1960, on the South African government’s reaction to the 1957 crisis over the integration of Little Rock Central High School. Winning Our Freedoms Together examines how African Americans engaged with, supported, and were inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement. Bringing… Continue Reading Nicholas Grant: Apartheid South Africa and the 1957 Little Rock Crisis
September 20, 2017
Andrew C. McKevitt: Globalization’s Heroes in the Age of Trumpism
Today we welcome a guest blog post from Andrew C. McKevitt, author of Consuming Japan: Popular Culture and the Globalizing of 1980s, on the popularity and impact of anime and manga in America today. Consuming Japan explores the intense and ultimately fleeting moment in 1980s America when the future looked Japanese. Would Japan’s remarkable post–World War II economic success enable the East Asian… Continue Reading Andrew C. McKevitt: Globalization’s Heroes in the Age of Trumpism
September 19, 2017
Lane Demas: Tiger Woods and his career are officially history
Today we welcome a guest blog post from Lane Demas, author of Game of Privilege: An African American History of Golf, on Tiger Woods and his legacy for African American golfers. Game of Privilege is a groundbreaking history of African Americans and golf, exploring the role of race, class, and public space in golf course development, the stories of individual… Continue Reading Lane Demas: Tiger Woods and his career are officially history
August 18, 2017
#CharlottesvilleCurriculum, #CharlottesvilleSyllabus: UNC Press edition
Over the past few days, UNC Press (like many of our sister presses) has received an influx of requests from readers for books that provide context around the tragic events in Charlottesville. UNC Press has a longstanding commitment to publish books that examine histories of racial violence. Many of our authors over the years have given especially deep consideration to way the Civil War era is remembered and commemorated in the South and the nation as a whole—a question once more at the center of public debate and struggle. Continue Reading #CharlottesvilleCurriculum, #CharlottesvilleSyllabus: UNC Press edition
August 17, 2017
Andrew C. McKevitt: UAW’s Defeat at Nissan and the Path Forward
On August 4, 2017, workers at Nissan’s assembly plant in Canton, Mississippi, voted to reject representation by the United Auto Workers union. The loss stung, to be sure, but the once-powerful UAW has become accustomed to failure in its efforts to organize auto production facilities operated by foreign companies. Twice previously, in 1989 and 2001, workers rejected the union at Nissan’s plant in Smyrna, Tennessee,—the company’s first North American plant, and only the second Japanese-owned plant in the United States. Continue Reading Andrew C. McKevitt: UAW’s Defeat at Nissan and the Path Forward
August 15, 2017
Interview: Eric Muller Gives Voice to Injustice with Scapegoat Cities Podcast
On the 75th anniversary of the opening of the Japanese American internment camps, Eric L. Muller, editor of Colors of Confinement: Rare Kodachrome Photographs of Japanese American Incarceration in World War II, talks to UNC Press Publicity Director Gina Mahalek about his related podcast, Scapegoat Cities, launching on September 6, 2017. Read on for a chance to win a copy of Colors of Confinement! Continue Reading Interview: Eric Muller Gives Voice to Injustice with Scapegoat Cities Podcast
August 10, 2017
Interview: Judy Kutulas on the “Me Decade” and Man Buns
Judy Kutulas, author of After Aquarius Dawned: How the Revolutions of the Sixties Became the Popular Culture of the Seventies, talks to UNC Press Publicity Director Gina Mahalek about making sense of the “me decade” and whether man buns are here to stay. Continue Reading Interview: Judy Kutulas on the “Me Decade” and Man Buns
July 10, 2017
Elizondo Griest: All the Agents and Saints
Today is the official publication date of All the Agents and Saints by Stephanie Elizondo Griest. As we wish a happy book birthday to Stephanie and All the Agents and Saints, we wanted to share the coverage that she’s been getting to keep our readers in the loop! Continue Reading Elizondo Griest: All the Agents and Saints
June 30, 2017
Ira Dworkin: In the Name of Lumumba
The world Malcolm X and Patrice Lumumba were building for all of their children continues among poets, musicians, and activists who embody the struggles and scars, and look to places like Jackson where activists imagine and demand justice, understanding what is at stake in Banner’s call–on behalf of Lumumba–to “please remember my name.” Continue Reading Ira Dworkin: In the Name of Lumumba
June 21, 2017
UNC Press Summer Reading List
Happy Summer! In honor of the summer solstice, we’re posting our suggestions for your summer reading list. If you’re planning a fun tropical vacation or just heading to your neighborhood pool, UNC Press has your perfect summer read. Pick up a fun guidebook or new biography, and don’t forget about our 40% sale! Continue Reading UNC Press Summer Reading List
June 20, 2017
Brian L. Tochterman: Birth of a Vigilante
As I argue in The Dying City this was a fantasy universe with critical consequences for the real world. Normalizing the vigilante was one key contingency of Spillane’s bestselling writing. Hammer was by no means the first, he’s preceded in time and succeeded in fame by Batman among others, but he did demonstrate that the vigilante no longer had to hide behind a mask or escape into a cave. He could operate in public, carry a private detective’s shield and a licensed gun and kill suspected criminals because “I like to shoot those dirty bastards.” In my book I connect Hammer with his filmic counterparts in 1970s New York, in particular Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) of Death Wish, and their unfortunate 1980s analogues like Bernard Goetz, the so-called subway vigilante, or the teenage terrorists of Howard Beach, Queens. Continue Reading Brian L. Tochterman: Birth of a Vigilante
May 8, 2017
Alisha Gaines: Ninety Minutes a Slave
First, we are instructed on how to be good slaves: “Never look a white person in the face,” and always say “yes sir and yes ma’am.” As the program promised, we encountered diverse attitudes regarding our fugitivity: slave traders who bought us only after we correctly answered questions about our assumed skills and imagined slave identities (I passed the test when, as a self-described cook, I knew the first step in frying a chicken meant wringing its neck); white women who wanted us off their land because they would have to pay a $500 fine for each of us; another, obviously doomed fugitive slave; a raving white man spuriously blaming us for his wife’s death and his unemployment; Quakers who offered dry cornbread and respite; and a free black family. Before returning to the museum, an oracle appeared to read each participant’s fate. Some would drown, others would settle in Indiana as either dentists or blacksmiths. Me? I would be apprehended by slave catchers, returned to Kentucky, and branded as a runaway. Continue Reading Alisha Gaines: Ninety Minutes a Slave
May 4, 2017
Book Trailer: City of Inmates by Kelly Lytle Hernández
Marshaling more than two centuries of evidence, historian Kelly Lytle Hernández unmasks how histories of native elimination, immigrant exclusion, and black disappearance drove the rise of incarceration in Los Angeles. In this telling, which spans from the Spanish colonial era to the outbreak of the 1965 Watts Rebellion, Hernández documents the persistent historical bond between the racial fantasies of conquest, namely its settler colonial form, and the eliminatory capacities of incarceration. Continue Reading Book Trailer: City of Inmates by Kelly Lytle Hernández
April 27, 2017
Sharon McConnell-Sidorick: How Flappers Helped Radicalize the Labor Movement and the New Deal
Union activists advanced a far-reaching, class-based vision that saw labor as a means to advance the rights of all working people. It was a vision of a new, socialist world and young members made it their own, combining Jazz Age rebelliousness with the left-wing traditions of the union. Women unionists used the brashness and irreverence that were hallmarks of the “flapper” in a surprisingly left-wing labor culture, merging constructions of “worker” with those of “modern woman.” They became “street-fighting women” supporting labor as a cause for human rights. They picketed and went to jail in droves for refusing to “move to the other side of the street” when ordered to by police, or participating in “lie-downs” to block driveways in front of mills, or calling strikebreakers “scabs” and threatening to beat them up. Women became such stalwarts on the picket lines that when they demanded a greater role in the union leadership, many of their male co-workers rushed to support them, insisting that “the women did do the fighting and you better give them their rights soon.” Continue Reading Sharon McConnell-Sidorick: How Flappers Helped Radicalize the Labor Movement and the New Deal
April 24, 2017
Jennifer Le Zotte: Poppin’ Tags: How Musicians Helped Make Used Clothes Fashionable
Macklemore’s 2013 tribute to thrift shops articulates the enduring association of creative output with secondhand commerce. Voluntary secondhand dress persists precisely because it suggests both cultural and economic distinction. It satisfies a desire to be seen as different than the average consumer dupe, as willing to invest time in the cultivation of originality without utilizing class and wealth privilege. In reality, however, secondhand economies and styles throughout the twentieth century are much more complicated; studying them reveals the futility of pursuing an effective anti-consumer consumption. But whatever the continuing or resurgent stigmas and social critiques of secondhand products may be, many creative dressers continue to agree with Macklemore’s concise assessment: “This is fucking awesome.” Continue Reading Jennifer Le Zotte: Poppin’ Tags: How Musicians Helped Make Used Clothes Fashionable
April 20, 2017
Brian Tochterman: Mailer for Mayor of the 51st State
Norman Mailer and Jimmy Breslin are part of a sometimes roving band of supporting characters that populate The Dying City. Mailer plays the role of the contrarian provocateur who challenges the dying city narrative, whether it’s holding up the risky brotherhood of New York City’s various youth gangs as an antidote to the “national disease” of boredom within the pages of Dissent or publishing a large format book on the cultural significance of the 1970s’ most otherwise reviled contemporary art form, spray-paint writing. Breslin, the longtime voice of New York within the pages of various dailies, is perhaps most famously known outside of the city as the epistolary confidant of David Berkowitz, a.k.a. Son of Sam, who addressed a cryptic letter to Breslin, then at the Daily News, during his 1977 killing spree. He also co-authored The Lonely Crimes, “or the crimes you don’t hear about,” series from October 1965 that is examined in my book. Continue Reading Brian Tochterman: Mailer for Mayor of the 51st State
April 18, 2017
Judy Kutulas: What If My Relatives Were on the “Wrong” Side of History?
I understand that Ben Affleck was unhappy to learn his ancestors owned slaves. I mention this because I was also unexpectedly side-swiped by history while researching a chapter for After Aquarius Dawned on the Peoples Temple and the Jonestown mass death. As traditional authority, aka the Establishment, declined after the war in Vietnam and Watergate and all those liberation movements – sexual, gay, women’s, black – Americans practiced more freedom of choice, summarized by a women’s movement slogan, “the personal is political.” Since I was already looking into the Temple, I took a side-jaunt into the story of my cousins who perished in Jonestown. Continue Reading Judy Kutulas: What If My Relatives Were on the “Wrong” Side of History?
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