Category: Guest Bloggers

In The Smoke With Marie Jean: A Barbecue Woman Who Built a Freedom Fund

Happy National Barbecue Month! We’re here with a guest blog post from Adrian Miller, author of Ferris and Ferris book Black Smoke: African Americans and the United States of Barbecue. In this post, Adrian gives us some insight into the life of a black woman pitmaster from nineteenth-century Arkansas named Marie Jean. Don’t miss Adrian’s next virtual event this Sunday,… Continue Reading In The Smoke With Marie Jean: A Barbecue Woman Who Built a Freedom Fund

Do Boycotts Work?

Guest post by Allyson P. Brantley, author of Justice, Power and Politics series book Brewing a Boycott: How a Grassroots Coalition Fought Coors and Remade American Consumer Activism Boycotts seem to be everywhere these days. Most recently, the April 2021 passage of Georgia’s new, restrictive voting law sparked significant backlash and boycotts – ranging from Major League Baseball’s decision to move the All-Star… Continue Reading Do Boycotts Work?

How A New Christian Identity Came About

Guest post by Amy B. Voorhees, author of A New Christian Identity: Christian Science Origins and Experience in American Culture The reason I wrote this book is because I was intrigued by the distance between differing definitions of Christian Science within academics. Over the decades, these have had varying degrees of alignment with one another and with key primary sources, and I wanted to know how this variation arose.  Scholars today agree on some core things about the Christian Science religion. For example,… Continue Reading How A New Christian Identity Came About

West of Slavery: The Southern Dream of a Transcontinental Empire

Reblogged with permission by ANZASA Online; by Kevin Waite, author of West of Slavery: The Southern Dream of a Transcontinental Empire I was born and raised in California, but it wasn’t until I moved to Pennsylvania to begin my PhD that I learned about the history of slavery in my native state. The subject never came up when I was a student… Continue Reading West of Slavery: The Southern Dream of a Transcontinental Empire

Reflecting on the Past Year Since the Publication of From Here to Equality

Guest post by  William A. Darity Jr. and A. Kirsten Mullen, whose groundbreaking and critically acclaimed book From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century was published one year ago this week. The year since the publication date of our UNC Press book, From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century (FHTE),… Continue Reading Reflecting on the Past Year Since the Publication of From Here to Equality

Florida’s Environmental Issues and the Price of Unchecked Development

Happy Earth Week and #EHW2021! Guest blog post by Jason Vuic, author of The Swamp Peddlers: How Lot Sellers, Land Scammers, and Retirees Built Modern Florida and Transformed the American Dream (available now for preorder, and on sale June 2021) In early April 2021, to honor the U.S. Senate’s “Small Business of the Week,” Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) was in Tampa… Continue Reading Florida’s Environmental Issues and the Price of Unchecked Development

Swann at 50

Guest blog post by Pamela Grundy, author of Color & Character: West Charlotte High and the American Struggle over Educational Equality, and Tom Hanchett, author of Sorting Out the New South City, Second Edition: Race, Class, and Urban Development in Charlotte, 1875-1975 Fifty years ago, on April 20, 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling in Swann v. Charlotte… Continue Reading Swann at 50

Lawrence Reddick and Recent Antiracism Initiatives in the American Historical Profession

Guest post written in conjunction with the start of the Organization of American Historians’s annual conference #OAH21, by David A. Varel, author of The Scholar and the Struggle: Lawrence Reddick’s Crusade for Black History and Black Power Black historian and activist Lawrence Reddick (1910-1995), the subject of my new UNC book, died over a quarter century ago, but his legacy… Continue Reading Lawrence Reddick and Recent Antiracism Initiatives in the American Historical Profession

Looking Forward, Looking Back

Guest blog post by Pamela Grundy and Susan Shackelford, authors of Shattering the Glass: The Remarkable History of Women’s Basketball Aari McDonald stares out of her WNBA draft photo, arms folded, biceps sculpted, looking ahead. On April 15, when the draft kicks off the WNBA’s silver anniversary season, McDonald will go high. She has just come off a stellar NCAA… Continue Reading Looking Forward, Looking Back

The Punitive Turn in American Life: How the United States Learned to Fight Crime Like a War

Guest blog post by Michael S. Sherry, author of The Punitive Turn in American Life: How the United States Learned to Fight Crime Like a War Advertisements urging civilians to buy guns captured how the punitive turn had played out by the 2010s. “As Close as You Can Get [to war] without Enlisting” ran one rifle ad, while another promoted… Continue Reading The Punitive Turn in American Life: How the United States Learned to Fight Crime Like a War

Reconstructing the Landscapes of Slavery

Guest post by Dale W. Tomich, co-author of Reconstructing the Landscapes of Slavery: A Visual History of the Plantation in the Nineteenth-Century Atlantic World, on sale April 19, 2021 The terms “plantation” and “plantation landscape” commonly conjure up the image of the Big House of the great planters of the Americas. The Big House is how the plantation was meant… Continue Reading Reconstructing the Landscapes of Slavery

#VirtualAHA: Meet the Acquisitions Editors

Today we welcome a guest post from members of the UNC Press acquisitions editorial team to accompany our 2021 virtual exhibit for the American Historical Association (AHA). Keep reading to see how our editors approach their work with historian authors, and to learn about new and forthcoming history titles from UNC Press. ### Especially in these turbulent times, we are… Continue Reading #VirtualAHA: Meet the Acquisitions Editors

Jack A. Draper III: Pibes and Moleques on the Soccer Field: The Parallel Stories of Maradona and Pelé, Argentina and Brazil

Today we welcome a guest post from Jack A. Draper III, translator of The Black Man in Brazilian Soccer by Mario Filho, out April 2021 from UNC Press. At turns lyrical, ironic, and sympathetic, Mario Filho’s chronicle of “the beautiful game” is a classic of Brazilian sports writing. Filho (1908–1966)—a famous Brazilian journalist after whom Rio’s Maracanã stadium is officially… Continue Reading Jack A. Draper III: Pibes and Moleques on the Soccer Field: The Parallel Stories of Maradona and Pelé, Argentina and Brazil

Early American Literature Book Prize for 2020

Lindsay DiCuirci, Associate Professor of English at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), has been selected to receive the 2020 Early American Literature Book Prize, which is awarded in even calendar years to a first monograph published in the prior two years, and in odd years to a second or subsequent book. DiCuirci’s Colonial Revivals: The Nineteenth-Century Lives of… Continue Reading Early American Literature Book Prize for 2020

Rebecca Sharpless: Celebrating 50 Years of the Southern Association for Women Historians (SAWH)

Today we welcome a guest post from Rebecca Sharpless, professor of history at Texas Christian University and past president of the Southern Association for Women Historians (SAWH). The Southern Association for Women Historians, founded in 1970, supports the study of women’s history and the work of women historians. The SAWH especially welcomes as members all women and men who are… Continue Reading Rebecca Sharpless: Celebrating 50 Years of the Southern Association for Women Historians (SAWH)

Douglas Flowe: The Conundrum of Writing About Race and Crime

Today we welcome a guest post from Douglas Flowe, author of Uncontrollable Blackness: African American Men and Criminality in Jim Crow New York, out now from UNC Press. In the wake of emancipation, black men in northern urban centers like New York faced economic isolation, marginalization, and racial violence. In response, some of those men opted to participate in underground… Continue Reading Douglas Flowe: The Conundrum of Writing About Race and Crime

Kelly A. Hammond: Islamophobia in Modern China

Today we welcome a guest post from Kelly A. Hammond, author of China’s Muslims and Japan’s Empire: Centering Islam in World War II, out now from UNC Press. In this transnational history of World War II, Kelly A. Hammond places Sino-Muslims at the center of imperial Japan’s challenges to Chinese nation-building efforts. Revealing the little-known story of Japan’s interest in… Continue Reading Kelly A. Hammond: Islamophobia in Modern China

Emily Contois: How I Wrote My First Academic Book

Today we welcome a guest post from Emily J. H. Contois, author of Diners, Dudes, and Diets: How Gender and Power Collide in Food Media and Culture, out now from UNC Press. The phrase “dude food” likely brings to mind a range of images: burgers stacked impossibly high with an assortment of toppings that were themselves once considered a meal;… Continue Reading Emily Contois: How I Wrote My First Academic Book

Tony Tian-Ren Lin: Make America Dream Again

Today we welcome a guest post from Tony Tian-Ren Lin, author of Prosperity Gospel Latinos and Their American Dream, out now from UNC Press. In this immersive ethnography, Tony Tian-Ren Lin explores the reasons that Latin American immigrants across the United States are increasingly drawn to Prosperity Gospel Pentecostalism, a strand of Protestantism gaining popularity around the world. Lin contends that… Continue Reading Tony Tian-Ren Lin: Make America Dream Again

Author Interview: Jodi Eichler-Levine on Painted Pomegranates and Needlepoint Rabbis

In this Q&A, Jodi Eichler-Levine discusses her new book Painted Pomegranates and Needlepoint Rabbis: How Jews Craft Resilience and Create Community, out now from UNC Press. Exploring a contemporary Judaism rich with the textures of family, memory, and fellowship, Jodi Eichler-Levine takes readers inside a flourishing American Jewish crafting movement. As she traveled across the country to homes, craft conventions,… Continue Reading Author Interview: Jodi Eichler-Levine on Painted Pomegranates and Needlepoint Rabbis