Category: History

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

New Series Announcement: Latinx Histories

As a leading publisher of American and Latin American history, UNC Press is delighted to announce the launch of Latinx Histories, a book series premised on the view that understanding Latinx history is essential to a more complete and complex understanding of the history of the United States, the Americas, and the world. The series editors and advisory board welcome book proposals that examine… Continue Reading New Series Announcement: Latinx Histories

Celebrating the Life of North Carolina’s Barbecue Legend Wilber Shirley

Earlier this month, Wilber Shirley, a true legend in North Carolina’s barbecue world, passed. In honor of his legacy, we have chosen to post his interview from John Shelton Reed, Dale Volberg Reed and William McKinney’s co-authored Holy Smoke: The Big Book of North Carolina Barbecue. “That grease hitting those coals makes the smoked flavor. You can’t spray it on… Continue Reading Celebrating the Life of North Carolina’s Barbecue Legend Wilber Shirley

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

Policing and Ongoing Social Injustice Towards Black Lives in America: A Reading List

In response to recent events in Brooklyn Center MN, the following curated reading list provides information regarding ongoing injustices and discriminatory practices perpetuated by a lack of criminal justice reform that’s historically targeted Black Americans. In the aftermath of the police killing of Daunte Wright, here are resources for donating and healing. The Punitive Turn in American Life: How the… Continue Reading Policing and Ongoing Social Injustice Towards Black Lives in America: A Reading List

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

Our Sisters in China Are Free: Mabel Ping-Hua Lee

Bringing our celebration of Women’s History Month on the UNC Press Blog to a close, the following excerpt is taken from Recasting the Vote: How Women of Color Transformed the Suffrage Movement by Cathleen D. Cahill The shadows were just starting to slide across New York’s Washington Square Park on the evening of May 5, 1912, when a company of fifty… Continue Reading Our Sisters in China Are Free: Mabel Ping-Hua Lee

UNC Press stands in solidarity with workers fighting for dignity and workplace democracy

The University of North Carolina Press stands in solidarity with workers fighting for dignity and workplace democracy in the book industry—especially the more than 5,000 Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama, who are in the midst of the historic first attempt to unionize one of the e-commerce giant’s warehouses. This is of particular interest to us both as publishing workers and… Continue Reading UNC Press stands in solidarity with workers fighting for dignity and workplace democracy

Historian Comes Clean, Stay Dirty

Follow the UNC Press Blog for a celebration of women’s histories and women historians throughout March. This year we are celebrating the significant contributions of notable women, renown and lesser known, throughout history, as well as women historians past and present that have been published by UNC Press. The following excerpt is taken from Writing Kit Carson: Fallen Heroes in a… Continue Reading Historian Comes Clean, Stay Dirty

Revolutionary Latin American Women

Follow the UNC Press Blog for a celebration of women’s histories and women historians throughout March. This year we are celebrating the significant contributions of notable women, renown and lesser known, throughout history, as well as women historians past and present that have been published by UNC Press. Two recently published biographies, Celia Sánchez Manduley: The Life and Legacy of… Continue Reading Revolutionary Latin American Women

Embracing Contradictions: Grace Lee Boggs’s Philosophic Journey and Political Emergence

UNC Press denounces racial terrorism and stands in solidarity with the Asian American and Pacific Islander community. #StopAsianHate The following excerpt is taken from In Love and Struggle: The Revolutionary Lives of James and Grace Lee Boggs by Stephen M. Ward Grace Lee Boggs was both product and producer of an improbable history. “I grew up in New York as… Continue Reading Embracing Contradictions: Grace Lee Boggs’s Philosophic Journey and Political Emergence

The Untold History of Anti-Asian Racism in the United States

UNC Press denounces racial terrorism and stands in solidarity with the Asian American community. #StopAsianHate The following excerpt is taken from Two Faces of Exclusion: The Untold History of Anti-Asian Racism in the United States by Lon Kurashige The 1882 act excluding Chinese laborers from the United States for ten years did more than displace the egalitarian spirit of the Burlingame… Continue Reading The Untold History of Anti-Asian Racism in the United States

Black and White and the Blues: Who profits from a cultural tradition?

Excerpt from Princeton Alumni Weekly‘s March 2021 issue is reblogged below with permission. By Adam Gussow, author of Whose Blues? Facing Up to Race and the Future of the Music Speaking very broadly, people who have emotional investments in the blues — people who like, play, think about, talk about, and identify themselves with the blues — have two diametrically… Continue Reading Black and White and the Blues: Who profits from a cultural tradition?

Women’s History Month: a Class, Religion, Sex, and Family Reading List

Follow the UNC Press Blog for a celebration of women’s histories and women historians throughout March. This year we are celebrating the significant contributions of notable women, renown and lesser known, throughout history, as well as women historians past and present that have been published by UNC Press. During Women’s History Month, save 40% on all UNC Press books with discount code… Continue Reading Women’s History Month: a Class, Religion, Sex, and Family Reading List

An International Women’s Day Reading List

Happy International Women’s Day 2021! This year’s theme for IWD2021 is “Choose to Challenge:” A challenged world is an alert world. Individually, we’re all responsible for our own thoughts and actions – all day, every day. We can all choose to challenge and call out gender bias and inequality. We can all choose to seek out and celebrate women’s achievements. Collectively,… Continue Reading An International Women’s Day Reading List

Gender, Family, and Kinship

Follow the UNC Press Blog for a celebration of women’s histories and women historians throughout March. The following excerpt is taken from Reproduction on the Reservation: Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Colonialism in the Long Twentieth Century by Brianna Theobold In the nineteenth century, gender relationships in Crow society, as in many North American Indigenous cultures, are better described as complementary than… Continue Reading Gender, Family, and Kinship

Celebrating Women’s History and Women Historians

2021 marks the 100th anniversary of “Women’s History Week,” which led to the eventual establishment by annual presidential proclamation of March as Women’s History Month. This year we are celebrating the significant contributions of notable women, renown and lesser known, throughout history, as well as women historians past and present that have been published by UNC Press. During Women’s History… Continue Reading Celebrating Women’s History and Women Historians

Conventions and Black Print Culture

Closing out our blog posts for Black History Month 2021, the following excerpt by P. Gabrielle Foreman is taken from The Colored Conventions Movement: Black Organizing in the Nineteenth Century (available March 2021), edited by P. Gabrielle Foreman, Jim Casey, and Sarah Lynn Patterson The Black press served not only as a conveyer of information but as a convener of audiences and ideas;… Continue Reading Conventions and Black Print Culture

Five Weekly Reads for Black History Month: Coming Soon

Preorder any of the following titles and save 40% on all UNC Press books with discount code 01DAH40. Visit the sale page to browse more recommended titles in African American History, or view our full list of books in African American Studies. White Evangelical Racism:The Politics of Morality in Americaby Anthea Butler Available March 2021 | In this clear-eyed, hard-hitting chronicle of American… Continue Reading Five Weekly Reads for Black History Month: Coming Soon