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August 21, 2020

Michael E. Woods: Lincoln and Douglas–and Breese? Another Look at the 1858 Illinois Senate Race

Today we welcome a guest post from Michael E. Woods, author of Arguing Until Doomsday: Stephen Douglas, Jefferson Davis, and the Struggle for American Democracy, out now from UNC Press. As the sectional crisis gripped the United States, the rancor increasingly spread to the halls of Congress. Preston Brooks’s frenzied assault on Charles Sumner was perhaps the most notorious evidence… Continue Reading Michael E. Woods: Lincoln and Douglas–and Breese? Another Look at the 1858 Illinois Senate Race

Categories American History/Author blog entry/Civil War/Guest Bloggers/History/Political Science/Politics/UNC Press Authors/UNC Press News
July 31, 2020

Amanda Brickell Bellows–Slavery: Past and Present

Today we welcome a guest post from Amanda Brickell Bellows, author of American Slavery and Russian Serfdom in the Post-Emancipation Imagination, out now from UNC Press. The abolition of Russian serfdom in 1861 and American slavery in 1865 transformed both nations as Russian peasants and African Americans gained new rights as subjects and citizens. During the second half of the… Continue Reading Amanda Brickell Bellows–Slavery: Past and Present

Categories African American History/African American Studies/American History/Art / Architecture/Author blog entry/European History/Guest Bloggers/History/UNC Press Authors/UNC Press News
July 21, 2020

Brian P. Luskey: Mary Lincoln, Labor Broker

Today we welcome a guest post from Brian P. Luskey, author of Men is Cheap: Exposing the Frauds of Free Labor in Civil War America, out now from UNC Press. When a Civil War substitute broker told business associates that “Men is cheep here to Day,” he exposed an unsettling contradiction at the heart of the Union’s war effort. Despite… Continue Reading Brian P. Luskey: Mary Lincoln, Labor Broker

Categories American History/Author blog entry/Civil War/Guest Bloggers/Labor Studies/UNC Press Authors/UNC Press News
March 23, 2020

Brian P. Luskey: The Civil War’s Free Labor Crisis

Today we welcome a guest post from Brian P. Luskey, author of Men is Cheap: Exposing the Frauds of Free Labor in Civil War America, out now from UNC Press. When a Civil War substitute broker told business associates that “Men is cheep here to Day,” he exposed an unsettling contradiction at the heart of the Union’s war effort. Despite… Continue Reading Brian P. Luskey: The Civil War’s Free Labor Crisis

Categories American History/Civil War/Labor Studies/UNC Press Authors/UNC Press News
December 20, 2019

New Talking Legal History Interviews with Kimberly M. Welch and Jane Hong

The fourth and fifth episodes of the Talking Legal History podcast series featuring UNC Press works are up! The fourth episode features Siobhan Barco talking with Kimberly M. Welch about her book Black Litigants in the Antebellum American South (University of North Carolina Press, 2018). Kimberly Welch is Assistant Professor of History and Assistant Professor of Law at Vanderbilt University. She is a… Continue Reading New Talking Legal History Interviews with Kimberly M. Welch and Jane Hong

Categories African American Studies/American History/Asian Studies/Interviews/Law / Legal History/Political Science/UNC Press Authors/UNC Press News
November 1, 2019

Author Interview: Jeremy Zallen on American Lucifers: The Dark History of Artificial Light, 1750-1865

In this Q&A, UNC Press graduate student intern Eric Bontempo (@ebontemp) talks with author Jeremy Zallen about his new book American Lucifers: The Dark History of Artificial Light, 1750-1865, out this month from UNC Press. From whale oil to kerosene, from the colonial period to the end of the U.S. Civil War, modern, industrial lights brought wonderful improvements and incredible wealth… Continue Reading Author Interview: Jeremy Zallen on American Lucifers: The Dark History of Artificial Light, 1750-1865

Categories American History/American Studies/Environmental Studies/Nature/UNC Press Authors/UNC Press News
March 26, 2019

Wendy Gonaver: Jailing People with Mental Illness, Part 2

Today we welcome a second guest post from Wendy Gonaver, author of The Peculiar Institution and the Making of Modern Psychiatry, 1840–1880, just published this month by UNC Press.  You can read the first installment here. Though the origins of asylums can be traced to Europe, the systematic segregation of the mentally ill into specialized institutions occurred in the Unites… Continue Reading Wendy Gonaver: Jailing People with Mental Illness, Part 2

Categories African American Studies/Author blog entry/Health / Medicine/UNC Press Authors/UNC Press News
March 13, 2019

Wendy Gonaver: Jailing People with Mental Illness, Part 1

Today we welcome the first of two guest posts from Wendy Gonaver, author of The Peculiar Institution and the Making of Modern Psychiatry, 1840–1880, just published this month by UNC Press. Though the origins of asylums can be traced to Europe, the systematic segregation of the mentally ill into specialized institutions occurred in the Unites States only after 1800, just… Continue Reading Wendy Gonaver: Jailing People with Mental Illness, Part 1

Categories African American Studies/Author blog entry/Health / Medicine/Science/UNC Press Authors/UNC Press News
November 26, 2018

Nina Silber: ‘Slavery’ in Depression Era America

Today we welcome a guest post from Nina Silber, author of This War Ain’t Over:  Fighting the Civil War in New Deal America, just published by UNC Press. The New Deal era witnessed a surprising surge in popular engagement with the history and memory of the Civil War era. From the omnipresent book and film Gone with the Wind and… Continue Reading Nina Silber: ‘Slavery’ in Depression Era America

Categories African American Studies/American History/Author blog entry/Civil Rights/Civil War/UNC Press Authors/UNC Press News
October 11, 2018

Oscar de la Torre: The Backlash Against Reparations for Slavery in Brazil

Today we welcome a guest post from Oscar de la Torre, author of The People of the River:  Nature and Identity in Black Amazonia, 1835–1945, just published by UNC Press. In his history of the black peasants of Amazonia, Oscar de la Torre focuses on the experience of African-descended people navigating the transition from slavery to freedom. He draws on… Continue Reading Oscar de la Torre: The Backlash Against Reparations for Slavery in Brazil

Categories Africa & African Diaspora/Author blog entry/Global Studies/Latin American/Caribbean Hist./UNC Press Authors/UNC Press News
November 21, 2017

Alice Elizabeth Malavasic: What’s in a Name?

Today we welcome a guest blog post from Alice Elizabeth Malavasic, author of The F Street Mess:  How Southern Senators Rewrote the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Pushing back against the idea that the Slave Power conspiracy was merely an ideological construction, The F Street Mess argues that some southern politicians in the 1850s did indeed hold an inordinate amount of power in… Continue Reading Alice Elizabeth Malavasic: What’s in a Name?

Categories African American History/Author blog entry/Civil War/Current Events/History/Politics/UNC Press Authors/UNC Press News
June 7, 2017

Alisha Gaines: White Guilt and Allyship on WGN’s Underground

Although Underground might be flawed history—often as anachronistic as its notable musical soundtrack—it provides helpful models for resistance. Executive producer John Legend makes it plain: “What these stories are intended to do—and what I think all storytelling is intended to do in some ways—is to hopefully develop some empathy among us so that we see each other, understand each other’s backgrounds, understand each other’s stories, and also understand the inhumanity that fellow human beings were able to inflict on each other in this country that’s supposed to be the land of the free.” Continue Reading Alisha Gaines: White Guilt and Allyship on WGN’s Underground

Categories African American History/African American Studies/American History/Author blog entry/Guest Bloggers/History
November 26, 2013

Glenn David Brasher: A Historian’s Take on ’12 Years a Slave’

Everything you have heard about the film 12 Years a Slave is true; it is exceptionally well acted, gorgeously filmed, and brutally honest about antebellum slavery. There are moments that are extremely difficult to watch and this is as it should be, leaving audiences stunned into numbness. Film critics and historians alike have praised it as a watershed in the depiction of slavery in American cinema, and this is certainly true. Nevertheless, the film demonstrates that Hollywood has not yet fully caught up with current interpretations of slave life in the antebellum South. Continue Reading Glenn David Brasher: A Historian’s Take on ’12 Years a Slave’

Categories African American History/American History/Author blog entry/Civil War/Film/Guest Bloggers/History
September 13, 2012

Video: Brett Rushforth on Indigenous and Atlantic Slaveries in New France

Bonds of Alliance: Indigenous and Atlantic Slaveries in New France, by Brett Rushforth”On the one hand I knew that the French were known in North America for their success at forming Indian alliances and learning Native languages, intermarrying with Native women, and fairly successfully integrating themselves into the Native communities for the purposes of the fur trade. But on the other hand, I also knew that there were households in the St. Lawrence Valley and the French colonies that held Native Americans as slaves. And I was interested in how these two things worked together.”—Brett Rushforth Continue Reading Video: Brett Rushforth on Indigenous and Atlantic Slaveries in New France

Categories American History/History/Native Amer./Indigenous Studies/Video
July 25, 2012

Excerpt: Bonds of Alliance, by Brett Rushforth

Between about 1660 and 1760, French colonists and their Native allies enslaved thousands of Indians, keeping them in the towns and villages of New France or shipping them to the French Caribbean. Over time, a vast network of slave raiders, traders, and owners emerged, ensnaring both colonists and Indians in the violence that generated slaves and kept them under French control. Continue Reading Excerpt: Bonds of Alliance, by Brett Rushforth

Categories American History/American Studies/History/Latin American/Caribbean Hist./Native Amer./Indigenous Studies
July 2, 2012

Excerpt: Help Me to Find My People, by Heather Andrea Williams

African Americans now had both more freedom to move about and more reason to believe they could begin to live the lives they had previously only imagined. For many, this meant reuniting with family, so they urgently attempted to get to the places where they thought their loved ones might be. Sometimes they found them there; other times the people were gone. Continue Reading Excerpt: Help Me to Find My People, by Heather Andrea Williams

Categories African American History/African American Studies/American History/Excerpts/History
June 4, 2012

Cynthia A. Kierner: Taking the Kid to Europe

Although she returned to Virginia and lived the vast bulk of her life as a plantation mistress in rural Albemarle County, as a widow she chose to spend most of her time in Boston or Washington, D.C. And she often recalled her time in Paris as “the brightest part” of her life. Continue Reading Cynthia A. Kierner: Taking the Kid to Europe

Categories American History/Author blog entry/Biography / Autobiography/Guest Bloggers/History/Women's Studies
June 1, 2012

Interview: Heather Andrea Williams on the search for family lost in slavery

I think the quilt on the cover really captures some of the pain of separation as well as the hope that some enslaved people held on to. There is a little girl’s dress, but no little girl, and the handwriting is traced from a letter sent by an enslaved woman to the family of her former owner asking what had ever become of her little girl. Vilet Lester, the child’s mother, was literate enough to write this letter seeking information about her daughter. She was hopeful that her current owner would be able to purchase the child and restore Lester’s family. One of the sad things about doing this work is that I do not know if Vilet Lester ever received an answer to her letter or whether she ever saw her daughter again. Continue Reading Interview: Heather Andrea Williams on the search for family lost in slavery

Categories African American History/African American Studies/American History/American Studies/History/Interviews