February 20, 2017

Andrew Denson: The DAR Squabble: Possessing Cherokee History in the Southeast

In the spring of 1935, an odd dispute erupted between rival groups of heritage workers in Tennessee and Georgia over the right to commemorate the Cherokee “Trail of Tears.” That year, members of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) in Georgia decided to erect a small monument commemorating Red Clay, a site along the Tennessee border where the government of the Cherokee Nation met in the years just prior to removal. Continue Reading Andrew Denson: The DAR Squabble: Possessing Cherokee History in the Southeast

Categories American History/American Studies/History/Native Amer./Indigenous Studies
February 15, 2017

Judy Kutulas: How Mary Tyler Moore Helped 1970s America Imagine a New Future

Fictional Mary worked at a television station in Minneapolis even she knew was second rate. Yet it was also so beyond how she imagined her future unfolding that she embraced it with a mixture of gusto and relatable fear. So many of us were in that predicament in the 1970s, jarred out of what was supposed to be our future by the revolutions of the 1960s. Americans identified with Mary far more personally than most previous characters. As someone who studies sitcoms, I could explain to you the structural set-up that facilitated that bonding, but the outcome is what’s more relevant here: that Americans regarded fictional Minnesotan Mary Richards as a real person. They sent letters to the Minneapolis post office addressed to her and made so many pilgrimages to knock on the door of the house featured in the opening credits that they exhausted and angered the actual owners of the house. Real people showed up in the series playing themselves, including first lady Betty Ford, who loved Mary as much as the rest of us. Continue Reading Judy Kutulas: How Mary Tyler Moore Helped 1970s America Imagine a New Future

Categories American Studies/Author blog entry/Guest Bloggers/Women's Studies
February 13, 2017

New Books for Spring and Summer 2017

  A new season means, of course, new books! Here we have provided an interactive catalog that you can browse through to see what’s in store for spring and summer 2017. You can visit our website to see what’s already available in the subject areas that interest you. The easiest way to stay up to date is to sign up for our… Continue Reading New Books for Spring and Summer 2017

Categories UNC Press News
February 6, 2017

Lisa A. Lindsay: The “Truth” Behind Our Ancestors

Forty years ago CBS aired the miniseries Roots, based on Alex Haley’s 1976 bestseller in which he traced his own ancestors back to West Africa, followed them to the United States as slaves, and took them forward into freedom. For the first time, a massive audience—roughly half the country’s population—confronted slavery and its legacies through an African American perspective. Roots prompted Americans to search out their own ancestors, particularly in subsequent years as digitization and personal computing brought resources to searchers’ fingertips.Now genealogy’s popularity—attested by the success of ancestry.com and the television show Who Do You Think You Are—makes it tempting to forget that we often shape our ancestors ourselves, even at the expense of historical evidence. Professional historians, in fact, were quick to point out fictions within Roots, a charge Haley accepted by originally calling his book a work of “faction.” I (re)learned this lesson about historical memory myself when it almost derailed the project that became my book, Atlantic Bonds. Continue Reading Lisa A. Lindsay: The “Truth” Behind Our Ancestors

Categories Africa & African Diaspora/African American History/African American Studies/Author blog entry/Guest Bloggers/History/Southern Studies
February 1, 2017

Stephen Cushman: Stephen Crane, Historical Researcher

The reason that we in the twenty-first century need to develop these complementary sensibilities is that the Civil War erupted against a standard of literacy different from our own, one with increasingly unfamiliar conventions of reading and writing. Because most of us know what we know about the war primarily through the medium of writing, understanding the war we read about depends to a large extent on our understanding as many historical and aesthetic layers of its writings as possible. Continue Reading Stephen Cushman: Stephen Crane, Historical Researcher

Categories Author blog entry/Civil War/Guest Bloggers/History/Literature
January 30, 2017

UNC Press Distributing the North Carolina Office of Archives and History’s Historical Publications

The University of North Carolina Press is now distributing the North Carolina Office of Archives and History’s Historical Publications—more than 150 books about the state’s history, people, and culture. Housed within the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources and Parks, the Office of Archives and History has earned a reputation for offering well-researched and affordably-priced works of nonfiction… Continue Reading UNC Press Distributing the North Carolina Office of Archives and History’s Historical Publications

Categories UNC Press News
January 23, 2017

Karina Biondi: The Extinction of Sexual Violence in the Prisons of São Paulo, Brazil

In 1992, in order to contain a riot, police forces invaded the largest prison in Latin America and killed 111 prisoners. The event, known as the Carandiru Massacre, was illustrated in the Brazilian film Carandiru, directed by Hector Babenco. Episodes of sexual violence were frequent, as were violent disputes over material goods and the conquest of spaces within the prison. Another factor that defined the life inside the prison was the financial capacity of the prisoner. There were, therefore, two ways of obtaining material goods and sexual services in prison: money or physical violence. Continue Reading Karina Biondi: The Extinction of Sexual Violence in the Prisons of São Paulo, Brazil

Categories Author blog entry/Guest Bloggers/Latin American/Caribbean Hist.
January 19, 2017

David S. Brown: America’s Sunbelt Politics: The Story of Three Centuries

Historians and social scientists such as Richard Hofstadter and Daniel Bell first began to use the term “Radical Right” in the 1950s as something of a reaction to McCarthyism. A decade later, with the unexpected presidential candidacy of the Republican Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater accompanied by the growth in wealth, population, and thus political power of many southern states, the term “Sunbelt Right” came into vogue. Continue Reading David S. Brown: America’s Sunbelt Politics: The Story of Three Centuries

Categories American History/Author blog entry/Guest Bloggers/History/Politics
January 11, 2017

Katrinell M. Davis: Hoodwinked, Bamboozled, and Led Astray: Adjunct Professors’ Struggle for Job Security in the United States

While education might be the key to success, it doesn’t provide the boost it once provided to American workers. Continue Reading Katrinell M. Davis: Hoodwinked, Bamboozled, and Led Astray: Adjunct Professors’ Struggle for Job Security in the United States

Categories Education/Labor Studies/Sociology
December 6, 2016

Gregg A. Brazinsky: Sino-American Competition Past and Present

Trump’s campaign rhetoric and willingness to aggravate the thorny Taiwan issue have raised hackles in Beijing. Part of the reason for this is that China’s view of itself and its role in the international community differs starkly from Washington’s. Continue Reading Gregg A. Brazinsky: Sino-American Competition Past and Present

Categories American History/Asian Studies/Author blog entry/Current Events/Guest Bloggers/Politics
December 2, 2016

Early American Literature Invites Nominations for Its 2017 Book Prize

The editors of Early American Literature are pleased to announce the third annual Early American Literature Book Prize, which is given for the best newly released academic book about American literature in the colonial period through the early republic (roughly 1830). The prize is offered in collaboration with the University of North Carolina Press, the Society of Early Americanists, and the MLA’s Forum on American Literature to 1800. Continue Reading Early American Literature Invites Nominations for Its 2017 Book Prize

Categories Literature/UNC Press News
December 1, 2016

Cuba Scholars Respond to the Death of Fidel Castro

The death of Fidel Castro marks the end of an era. There are no simple obituaries for this man in American media; indeed, there is no way to talk about him in American culture without thinking critically about his role in history, his political power, and his relationship to the United States. Here, we share the perspectives of some of the historians of Cuba published by UNC Press who have been called on by the media to respond to this historical moment. Continue Reading Cuba Scholars Respond to the Death of Fidel Castro

Categories Cuba
November 30, 2016

Lisa A. Lindsay: The Enduring Allure of Emigration

The outcome of this nineteenth-century emigration movement offers little comfort for those who would leave today. At least half of the African Americans who settled in West Africa perished of tropical diseases, while others struggled to eke out a living. And they were not welcome there. Though they called their colony Liberia and touted “the love of liberty” in their official motto, the settlers’ encounters with local Africans were marked by violence, condescension, and—ironically—conditions not unlike slavery. Continue Reading Lisa A. Lindsay: The Enduring Allure of Emigration

Categories Africa & African Diaspora/African American History/African American Studies/American History/Author blog entry/Guest Bloggers/History
November 29, 2016

Nora E. Jaffary: Ancient Abortifacients in Modern Mexico

One of the things that surprised me the most was that throughout the colonial period and up until as late as the 1860s, neither community members nor judicial authorities in Mexico seemed particularly troubled that women were procuring abortions. Continue Reading Nora E. Jaffary: Ancient Abortifacients in Modern Mexico

Categories Author blog entry/Guest Bloggers/Health / Medicine/Women's Studies
November 21, 2016

Lorien Foote: How Slaves Prayed for Yankees during the Civil War

In the fall of 1864, slaves prayed with and for hundreds of Yankee soldiers who sought refuge in their cabins. The words of these prayers reveal slaves’ powerful faith that God would intervene in history to defeat the Confederacy and bring about their freedom. Continue Reading Lorien Foote: How Slaves Prayed for Yankees during the Civil War

Categories American History/Author blog entry/Civil War/Guest Bloggers/History
November 18, 2016

University Press Week 2016 Blog Tour Day 5: #FF UNC Press Publishing Partners

We have celebrated the theme of Community for the past several days with our sibling publishers in the Association of American University Presses’ #UPweek. Today we invite you into our own virtual rolodex to introduce you to just some of the many partner organizations with whom we have collaborated to make many of your favorite books and journals possible. Continue Reading University Press Week 2016 Blog Tour Day 5: #FF UNC Press Publishing Partners

Categories African American History/African American Studies/American History/Biography / Autobiography/Civil Rights/Documentary Studies/History/Journals/Media Studies/Music/Native Amer./Indigenous Studies/North Carolina/Photography/Southern Studies/The Book Biz/Travel/UNC Press News/Women's Studies
November 17, 2016

Excerpt: Written/Unwritten, by Patricia A. Matthew

To some degree, all of the contributors to this volume are engaged in some form of what might be called “activism,” though almost no one will apply the label to themselves or their work. They may call it “community service,” “community building,” or, as I prefer, “community engagement.” Or they may resist labels by not calling it anything at all. All, however, are rooted in the understanding that their research and teaching need to have a material impact on the world outside of the work the academy recognizes. The challenge, then, is to think through the implications, through the risks and stakes. Continue Reading Excerpt: Written/Unwritten, by Patricia A. Matthew

Categories African American Studies/Education/Excerpts
November 17, 2016

Michael Jarrett: John Hammond’s Golden Ears

John Hammond’s knack for discovering talent was so uncanny, so unparalleled in the history of American music, that it’s regularly celebrated. It is, however, rarely examined. Perhaps, that’s because scrutiny can come off as suspiciousness poisoned by ungratefulness. Continue Reading Michael Jarrett: John Hammond’s Golden Ears

Categories African American Studies/American Studies/Author blog entry/Guest Bloggers/Music