What sparked your interest in this area of research? I entered graduate school broadly interested in cross-cultural relations in Early America. While working on an undergraduate senior thesis about Protestant missions in the Cherokee Nation, I came across some fascinating material on Cherokee earthquake interpretations in 1811 and 1812. Putting off a science class required for graduation […]
By Kevin Waite 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 in California in the 1990s and early 2000s. Not because I […]
What sparked your interest in this area of research? The book is a natural extension of my work, which focuses on plantations both in their historical context as well as their cultural history—how their use, definition and significance has evolved into what we know as “plantations” today, which are largely museums, historic sites, and tourist […]
Could you give us a short overview of Complexion of Empire in Natchez: Race and Slavery in the Mississippi Borderlands? Complexion of Empire investigates slavery and race in the borderlands of the lower Mississippi Valley. The book essentially sketches out the first century of sustained European and African contact in the region. I specifically focus on the […]
What led you to/sparked your interest in this area of research? I’ve always had an interested in “revolutionary” eras of history. Moments when things get upended in one way or another. As an undergraduate, I was drawn to the experiences of white and Black Americans in the post-Emancipation/Jim Crow era. Understanding how Black Americans pushed […]
By Katrina M. Phillips I joke that I blame my dad for this book, but it’s true. I’m a citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe, and our reservation sits along the south shore of Lake Superior in northern Wisconsin. The neighboring town of Bayfield hosts an apple festival every year, and […]
By Louis A. DeCaro, Jr. In 1882, a small notice appeared in the Huntsville [Georgia] Gazette, reporting that the skull of Shields Green, one of John Brown’s raiders, was on exhibit at a store in Athens, Georgia. This notice appeared in a few other Southern papers, suggesting the possibility that the skull may have been […]
By Jeanne E. Abrams, University of Denver My main thesis in A View From Abroad is that the European journeys of John and Abigail Adams expanded their life experiences and honed their analytical skills. It allowed them a breadth of perspective they could not have experienced in America. They came face-to-face abroad with some of […]
In November 2020, Kate Rivington interviewed Timothy Minchin, Professor in the Department of History at La Trobe University, about his upcoming article in the December 2020 issue of the Australasian Journal of American Studies “Be Your Own Boss? Long-Term Labor Trends and the Rise of Uber” KR: What brought you to this topic? TM: One […]
What led you to/sparked your interest in this area of research? My life project—the question that wakes me up in the middle of the night and that I plan to address with all of my future work—is studying how religion inspires people of faith to confront, or sadly too-often perpetuate, white supremacy. Exploring the abolitionist […]
