February 2, 2015

Thomas J. Brown on Confederate Retweeting

Twitter is more similar to commemorative forms that have flourished since the mid-twentieth century. It appeals to commercialized recreation rather than ritualized reverence, much as the Confederate battle flag gained visibility through college sports and sustained influence through sales of t-shirts and beach towels. Enthusiasm for social media is part of the celebration of technology that has recently reshaped memory of the Hunley submarine. The concept of historical “live tweeting” resembles efforts of Civil War re-enactors to reproduce conditions of the past, such as the real-time unfolding of events, though my day-by-day chronicle does not pretend to offer the “period rush” some hobbyists find in simulation. Continue Reading Thomas J. Brown on Confederate Retweeting

Categories Author blog entry/Civil War/Events/Guest Bloggers/History/Military History
January 29, 2015

Marcie Cohen Ferris: Civil Rights, Lunch Counters, and North Carolina Basketball

In 1966, Charles “Charlie” Scott (b. 1948 in NYC) became the first African American student to attend the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill on an athletic scholarship. He decided to attend UNC rather than basketball powerhouse Davidson College after a wrenching moment at a small café in Davidson, North Carolina. Former Davidson College basketball star Terry Holland, who both played and later served as assistant coach under the college’s legendary coach Lefty Driesell, and UNC law professor and civil rights attorney Daniel H. Pollitt, who was a passionate advocate for social justice in Chapel Hill during the 1950s and 1960s, vividly recall Scott’s historic decision. Pollitt worked with Dean Smith, UNC’s beloved basketball coach (1961-1997) and Robert Seymour, progressive minister at the Olin T. Binkley Baptist Church in Chapel Hill, to recruit Charlie Scott and to help integrate the university community. Continue Reading Marcie Cohen Ferris: Civil Rights, Lunch Counters, and North Carolina Basketball

Categories African American History/Author blog entry/Civil Rights/Cooking / Food/Guest Bloggers/History/North Carolina/Sports
January 27, 2015

Doug Orr: A Young Pete Seeger Encounters Music of the Appalachians

Pete was seventeen years of age in 1936 when he accompanied his father to Asheville to attend Lunsford’s Mountain Dance and Folk Festival. During Fiona Ritchie and my Wayfaring Strangers book interview with Pete at his home above the Hudson River, Pete recalled that “ordinary working people were making fantastically good music.” The youthful Pete Seeger was mesmerized as Lunsford presided on the spotlighted stage over a parade of square-dance teams, family string bands, singers, fiddlers, and banjo players. There Pete had his formative exposure to the five-string banjo played by Samantha Bumgarner, from whom he acquired his first such instrument. Pete recalled that Lunsford patiently showed him basic banjo licks that Pete would practice and perfect over subsequent years. Continue Reading Doug Orr: A Young Pete Seeger Encounters Music of the Appalachians

Categories Appalachian Studies/Author blog entry/Guest Bloggers/Music/North Carolina
January 26, 2015

Video: Tomas F. Summers Sandoval Jr. on what history tells us about our present

Tomás F. Summers Sandoval Jr., author of Latinos at the Golden Gate: Creating Community and Identity in San Francisco, explains how history might not be synonymous with the past. Continue Reading Video: Tomas F. Summers Sandoval Jr. on what history tells us about our present

Categories History/Latin American/Caribbean Hist./Latino Studies/Video
January 21, 2015

Brian K. Feltman: Blurred Lines: Prisoners of War, Deserters, and Bowe Bergdahl

Accusations of desertion prompted many of Bergdahl’s supporters to reconsider their positions and left several congressmen scrambling to delete early tweets that praised his service. While many Americans may be surprised by the heated controversy surrounding Bergdahl’s capture, the Bergdahl affair is only the most recent example of the hazy line separating deserters and prisoners of war. Continue Reading Brian K. Feltman: Blurred Lines: Prisoners of War, Deserters, and Bowe Bergdahl

Categories Author blog entry/Current Events/Guest Bloggers/History/Military History/Military Studies
January 14, 2015

Christina D. Abreu: In Honor of Professor Juan Flores

Criticism and embrace of identity terms like “Hispanic” and “Latino/a” have been longstanding in the field of Latino/a Studies. Puerto Ricans, Flores argued, share more in common with African Americans than with other Latino/a groups. He contended that Puerto Ricans and African Americans experience similar forms of racial and ethnic subordination in the United States because of parallels in their location in urban areas, their socioeconomic status, and their position as colonized subjects of the same nation-state. Continue Reading Christina D. Abreu: In Honor of Professor Juan Flores

Categories Author blog entry/Cuba/Cultural Studies/Current Events/Guest Bloggers/History/Latin American/Caribbean Hist./Latino Studies/Music
January 9, 2015

Christopher C. Sellers: How a Mid-Century LA Environmentalist Got Beyond John Muir

A century out from Muir’s death, humanity’s mounting influence on the planet, and what we now know about that influence, have made a truly pristine nature ever more difficult, even impossible, to find. No place on earth stays untouched by a phenomenon like climate change. To be sure, we still need our Yosemites, not least for the transcendent encounters that Muir and his descendants have helped us to find in them. Yet in a time when human impacts have turned planetary in scale, the project of protecting our wildest places has become far more bound up with what we do in our cities, suburbs, and factories than Muir ever imagined Continue Reading Christopher C. Sellers: How a Mid-Century LA Environmentalist Got Beyond John Muir

Categories American History/Author blog entry/Environmental Studies/Guest Bloggers
December 23, 2014

Glenn David Brasher’s Civil War Top 10 from 2014

Do we have a new annual tradition on our hands? Last year over on our CivilWar150 blog, Glenn David Brasher gave us a great roundup of Civil War-related highlights from throughout the year. He’s back at it again with 2014’s big news in Civil War history. You’ll find elections, debates, satire, sincerity, and more. Continue Reading Glenn David Brasher’s Civil War Top 10 from 2014

Categories African American Studies/Civil War/History/Video
December 22, 2014

Excerpt: Alcohol: A History, by Rod Phillips

One of the earliest printed books on aqua vitae, in this case brandy, was published in Germany in 1476 and recommended a half-spoonful every morning to prevent conditions as varied as arthritis and bad breath. Other physicians wrote of the beneficial effects of brandy for physical ailments (it cured headaches, heart disease, gout, and deafness); as an aid to appearance (it improved the bust and stopped hair graying); and as therapy for emotional and other problems (it banished melancholy and forgetfulness). The inclusion of conditions commonly associated with aging (such as deafness, forgetfulness, and graying) reflects the claims that drinking brandy prolonged youth and thus life itself. Continue Reading Excerpt: Alcohol: A History, by Rod Phillips

Categories Cooking / Food/Excerpts/History
December 19, 2014

Essential Background Reading on Cuba from UNC Press

In light of the sea change in U.S.-Cuban relations, I am delighted to recommend two books to anyone who wants to get up to speed: On Becoming Cuban: Identity, Nationality, and Culture, by Louis A. Pérez Jr., and Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana, by William LeoGrande and Peter Kornbluh. Continue Reading Essential Background Reading on Cuba from UNC Press

Categories Cuba/Current Events/Latin American/Caribbean Hist./Politics
December 18, 2014

Excerpt: Muslim American Women on Campus, by Shabana Mir

Fatima was an adventurous designer of third space identities, a non-hijabi who was at the same time religiously devout, socially liberal, sexually conservative, and politically aware. When Fatima entered the gates of Georgetown, having newly graduated from a strictly Islamic school, she was horrified to find that some of her Muslim friends drank alcohol. Continue Reading Excerpt: Muslim American Women on Campus, by Shabana Mir

Categories American Studies/Anthropology/Education/Excerpts/Islamic Studies/Religion
December 15, 2014

Stephanie B. Jeffries: Free the Phoenix: Fire and Rebirth in Linville Gorge

Controversy rages over fire policy in Linville Gorge, which was the first designated Federal Wilderness in the East with the passage of the Wilderness Act in 1964. Currently, the policy is to suppress any fires that threaten manmade structures, but to allow lower-intensity lightning-strike fires to burn. The latest management plan proposes prescribed burns in the Gorge to promote pines and rare plants and to reduce fuel loads. Homeowners in the Gingercake Acres development, perched on the eastern rim of the Gorge, understandably worry about risk to their homes. Advocacy organizations like Save the Linville Gorge Wilderness argue that fire destroys the wild character of the landscape. Skeptics scoff that the Forest Service maintains only an illusion of control over something as unpredictable and powerful as fire. Continue Reading Stephanie B. Jeffries: Free the Phoenix: Fire and Rebirth in Linville Gorge

Categories Author blog entry/Guest Bloggers/Hiking/Nature/North Carolina/Travel
December 11, 2014

Video: Celebrating 75 Years of ‘These Are Our Lives’

Contemporary documentary projects such as StoryCorps and Humans of New York thrive today in a spirit similar to that which led the vision of the Federal Writers’ Project and These Are Our Lives. They remind us that every life has a story, and every story matters. Continue Reading Video: Celebrating 75 Years of ‘These Are Our Lives’

Categories African American Studies/American History/American Studies/History/Labor Studies/Literature/Sociology/Southern Studies/UNC Press News
December 9, 2014

Lisa Wilson: Cinderella and Her Still Evil Stepmother

Looking at the history of the evil stepmother stereotype I think explains some of the staying power of these familiar tales. Although stepmother characterizations have been negative since as far back as ancient Greece, in Western culture the need for evil stepmothers became more urgent in the United States in response to a new idea of the proper family in Enlightenment Europe. Sentimental families, as they were called, became the ideal for the rising middle class in Western Europe. Continue Reading Lisa Wilson: Cinderella and Her Still Evil Stepmother

Categories American History/Author blog entry/Guest Bloggers
December 4, 2014

Mara Casey Tieken: The Children “Left Behind”

But the Act has another flaw, deeper and more consequential than its 100 percent proficiency mandate. Written into NCLB is an assumption: that imparting basic math and reading skills should be the purpose of our schools. In mandating a tested-and-sanctioned proficiency in these basics, the Act quickly reduced the purpose of public education to a very narrowly defined type of academic achievement.

I won’t argue the importance of reading and math—these are necessary skills. But I will argue that schooling should be about more than reading and math, especially the sort of reading and math that can be measured on a state test. Continue Reading Mara Casey Tieken: The Children “Left Behind”

Categories Author blog entry/Education/Guest Bloggers
December 3, 2014

Enter to Win a Signed Copy of New York Times Bestseller ‘Wayfaring Strangers’

Congratulations to Fiona Ritchie and Doug Orr for their New York Times Bestseller, Wayfaring Strangers: The Musical Voyage from Scotland and Ulster to Appalachia! We’re giving away 5 signed copies to our subscribers!

To celebrate, the UNC Press is giving away six signed copies of Wayfaring Stranger when you sign up for our monthly e-newsletter in the Music, Travel, or Appalachian Studies categories. Just enter your name and email address and subscribe to the Music, Travel, and/or Appalachian Studies mailing list(s). Continue Reading Enter to Win a Signed Copy of New York Times Bestseller ‘Wayfaring Strangers’

Categories Appalachian Studies/Music/Travel/UNC Press News
December 1, 2014

Sarah Mayorga-Gallo: What We’re Missing When We Talk about Integrated Neighborhoods

What is the relationship between residential segregation and racial inequality? Scholars have spent decades analyzing data and arguing that residential segregation is the “linchpin” of racial inequality in the United States. The conclusion that many draw, therefore, is that residential integration is the key to reducing racial inequality. Pretty straightforward, right? Well, not quite. Continue Reading Sarah Mayorga-Gallo: What We’re Missing When We Talk about Integrated Neighborhoods

Categories African American Studies/Author blog entry/Guest Bloggers/Latino Studies/Sociology