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January 22, 2026

New Year’s Day in the Diaries of Black Women: How Frances Anne Rollin’s writings reveal the evolving meaning of emancipation at the turn of the year

As the new year invites us to reflect on past struggles and future possibilities, the following guest post by Jennifer Putzi, author of The Reconstruction Diary of Frances Anne Rollin: A Critical Edition, reflects on how Black women diarists have long marked this moment with hope and resolve. On New Year’s Day, 1863, writer and teacher Charlotte Forten began her… Continue Reading New Year’s Day in the Diaries of Black Women: How Frances Anne Rollin’s writings reveal the evolving meaning of emancipation at the turn of the year

Categories Guest Bloggers
November 19, 2025

How Religious Food Movements Paved the Way for MAHA

The following is a guest blog post by Adrienne Krone, author of Free-Range Religion: Alternative Food Movements and Religious Life in the United States which is now available wherever books are sold. The front page of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) website features the heading “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) followed by a description of this mission: “Under… Continue Reading How Religious Food Movements Paved the Way for MAHA

Categories Guest Bloggers/Religion
October 30, 2025

Old Fort Loops: A Soundtrack of Resilience After Hurricane Helene

How does one recover from and process a generational storm like Helene? For UNC Press author Scott Huffard and his friends, the answer was through music. When Helene swept through the Banner Elk area a year ago, high winds toppled trees, mudslides blocked town roads while surging floodwaters scoured yards, ravaged homes, and destroyed the town sewer and water system.… Continue Reading Old Fort Loops: A Soundtrack of Resilience After Hurricane Helene

Categories Guest Bloggers/Music/North Carolina
July 8, 2025

Beyond the Fire: Reclaiming Black Craftsmanship from the Ruins of Nottoway

The following is a guest post by Torren L. Gatson, assistant professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and co-editor of Fighting for Freedom: Black Craftspeople and the Pursuit of Independence which is available now wherever books are sold. The burning of Louisiana’s Nottoway Plantation in May has sparked a wave of reactions across the public… Continue Reading Beyond the Fire: Reclaiming Black Craftsmanship from the Ruins of Nottoway

Categories African American Studies/Guest Bloggers
June 16, 2025

Ancestry.com and the Long Civil War 

The following is a guest post by James Marten, professor of history emeritus at Marquette University and author of The Sixth Wisconsin and the Long Civil War: The Biography of a Regiment which is available now wherever books are sold. George Johnson survived the Civil War—but just barely. Enlisting in the Sixth Wisconsin in the summer of 1861 and rising… Continue Reading Ancestry.com and the Long Civil War 

Categories Civil War/Guest Bloggers
May 15, 2025

Reading About Writing

The following is a guest post by Michael Amoruso, assistant professor of religious studies at Occidental College and author of Moved by the Dead: Haunting and Devotion in São Paulo, Brazil which is now available wherever books are sold. I had a hard time writing Moved by the Dead. This probably comes as no surprise. There’s a quote, often misattributed to… Continue Reading Reading About Writing

Categories Guest Bloggers/Religion
April 24, 2025

Same-Sex Romance and the Retreat from Reconstruction

The following is a guest post from Andrew Donnelly, assistant professor of English at the University of Memphis and author of Confederate Sympathies: Same-Sex Romance, Disunion, and Reunion in the Civil War Era, which is now available wherever books are sold.   The national retreat from Reconstruction—the abandonment, especially by white Northerners, in the face of white Southern resistance, of the… Continue Reading Same-Sex Romance and the Retreat from Reconstruction

Categories Civil War/Gender Studies/Guest Bloggers/LGBT Studies
March 10, 2025

Black Women Have Dreams: A Photo Essay of My Ancestors

As we celebrate Women’s History Month, it’s essential to honor the resilience and strength of Black women throughout history. In this blog post Brittany Friedman, author of Carceral Apartheid: How Lies and White Supremacists Run Our Prisons, delves into the resilience and strength of her grandmother, great grandmother, and their descendants, highlighting their unwavering hope and determination in the face of… Continue Reading Black Women Have Dreams: A Photo Essay of My Ancestors

Categories African American Studies/Guest Bloggers/Women's Studies
January 31, 2025

Dietary Dreams of Immortality

The following is a guest post from Travis A. Weisse, author of Health Freaks: America’s Diet Champions and the Specter of Chronic Illness which tells a new history of modern diets in America by exploring how the popularity of diets grew alongside patients’ frustrations with the limitations and failures of the American healthcare system in the face of chronic disease.… Continue Reading Dietary Dreams of Immortality

Categories Cultural Studies/Guest Bloggers/Health / Medicine
November 27, 2024

Dear Young Master and Friend: How One Letter Turned into a Biography

The following is a guest post from Sydney Nathans, author of Freedom’s Mirage: Virgil Bennehan’s Odyssey from Emancipation to Exile, which traces the exceptional life of Virgil Bennehan, born in bondage in 1808 in Piedmont North Carolina, who rose to become an enslaved doctor on one of the South’s largest plantations and to view himself as a friend to Black… Continue Reading Dear Young Master and Friend: How One Letter Turned into a Biography

Categories African American Studies/Guest Bloggers
November 21, 2024

The Pritikin Program’s Influence on American Dietary Guidelines

The Following is a guest post from Travis A. Weisse, author of Health Freaks: America’s Diet Champions and the Specter of Chronic Illness, which is available now wherever books are sold. Occupying the unenviable liminal space between charlatanism and unserious gossip magazine fodder, diet gurus are not typically treated as serious historical figures. Yet, as my book Health Freaks shows, a fair… Continue Reading The Pritikin Program’s Influence on American Dietary Guidelines

Categories Cultural Studies/Guest Bloggers/Health / Medicine
November 20, 2024

Bibliographical On-Sendings and Dentdale Waterfalls 

The following is guest post from Andy Martrich, author of Shy of the Squirrel’s Foot: A Peripheral History of the Jargon Society as Told through Its Missing Books, which is now available wherever books are sold. Shy of the Squirrel’s Foot: A Peripheral History of the Jargon Society as Told through its Missing Books is a book about the legendary writer’s… Continue Reading Bibliographical On-Sendings and Dentdale Waterfalls 

Categories Guest Bloggers/Literature
July 24, 2024

A Novel Way of Researching the Family as a Caring Community

The following is a guest post by Lois Benjamin, author of Ascension: The Sociology of an African American Family’s Generational Journey, which is now available wherever books are sold. “Sometimes the heart sees what is invisible to the eye.” H. Jackson Brown’s line captures the process of making this groundbreaking, ethnographic case study, Ascension: The Sociology of an African American Family’s… Continue Reading A Novel Way of Researching the Family as a Caring Community

Categories African American Studies/Guest Bloggers/Sociology
January 24, 2024

Archiving Birmingham Jazz: A Reader’s Guide to the Southern Music Research Center 

The following is a guest post by Burgin Mathews, author of Magic City: How the Birmingham Jazz Tradition Shaped the Sound of America which is now available wherever books are sold. For much of the twentieth century, the city of Birmingham, Alabama, was home to one of American music’s most essential unsung communities, a thriving network of musicians whose lives… Continue Reading Archiving Birmingham Jazz: A Reader’s Guide to the Southern Music Research Center 

Categories Guest Bloggers/Music
December 13, 2023

Mobilities and Empires

The following is a guest post by Mark Dizon, author of Reciprocal Mobilities: Indigeneity and Imperialism in an Eighteenth-Century Philippine Borderland, which is available now wherever books are sold. In 1753, a group of Igorot leaders from the Cordillera Mountains at the center of the island of Luzon were in Manila, the Spanish colonial capital of the Philippines, for a… Continue Reading Mobilities and Empires

Categories Asian Studies/Guest Bloggers
December 7, 2023

Seeking Alternative Archives to Better Understand the Past

The following is a guest post by Whitney Nell Stewart, author of This is Our Home: Slavery and Struggle on Southern Plantations, which is now available wherever books are sold. This summer may have been one of the hottest on record, but in July 2012 I experienced a suffocating heat and humidity unlike anything this Gulf-South girl had ever felt.… Continue Reading Seeking Alternative Archives to Better Understand the Past

Categories African American Studies/Guest Bloggers
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
October 19, 2023

Q&A with David Menconi author of “Oh, Didn’t They Ramble”

The following is a Q&A with David Menconi, whose second book with UNC PRESS Oh, Didn’t They Ramble: Rounder Records and the Transformation of American Roots Music is available now wherever books are sold. Oh, Didn’t They Ramble is the definitive history of Rounder Records, drawing on previously untapped archives and extensive interviews with artists, Rounder staff, and founders Ken… Continue Reading Q&A with David Menconi author of “Oh, Didn’t They Ramble”

Categories Guest Bloggers/Music
September 29, 2023

The Reminiscences of a One-Hundred-and-One-Year-Old Man

The following is a guest blog post by Alison Li, author of Wondrous Transformations: A Maverick Physician, the Science of Hormones, and the Birth of the Transgender Revolution, which is available now wherever books are sold. When I was debating whether to write a biography of Dr. Harry Benjamin (1885-1986), several questions loomed large. Benjamin, a German-American physician, is best… Continue Reading The Reminiscences of a One-Hundred-and-One-Year-Old Man

Categories Biography / Autobiography/Guest Bloggers/Health / Medicine/LGBT Studies