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 of the things that made me interested in the topic … Continue reading Q&A: Professor Timothy Minchin
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 movement was an obvious starting point. Could you give us … Continue reading Ask an Americanist: Dr. Ben Wright
Tell us a bit about yourself. It’s fair to say that I’m a mountain girl. I grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah, surrounded by the sharp peaks and desert valleys of the “young” Rocky Mountains. I now make my home in Boone, North Carolina, surrounded by the time-smoothed knobs and forested hollars of the “old” Appalachian Mountains. I think that living in these spaces … Continue reading Ask an Americanist: Carrie Streeter
By Elissa Zellinger Long before I had children, I came across Mister Dog, a funny little children’s book about a funny little dog named Crispian’s Crispian. He is thusly named because, as he tells us on the first page, he “belongs to himself.” This remark is repeated throughout Mister Dog, emphasizing the joke that dogs belong to themselves, not people. While Margaret Wise Brown intended … Continue reading Lyrical Strains: Lyric, Liberalism, and Women’s Poetry, 1820-1920
By Libra R. Hilde As Americans grapple with the most recent spate of deaths of Black men and women at the hands of the police, we are once again confronting damaging stereotypes about the Black family and Black masculinity rooted in the legacy of slavery. My book, Slavery, Fatherhood, and Paternal Duty, explores the masculine hierarchy of slavery that continues to influence current attitudes. In … Continue reading Slavery, Fatherhood, and Paternal Duty in African American Communities over the Long Nineteenth Century
In October 2020, Sam Watts interviewed Lorena Márquez, Assistant Professor in the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at the University of California Davis, about her latest book, La Gente: Struggles for Empowerment and Community Self-Empowerment in Sacramento (The University of Arizona Press, 2020). SW: Tell us about yourself and how you came to writing this book. LM: I am the daughter of immigrants from … Continue reading Q&A: Lorena V. Márquez
1. Could you give us a brief overview of your upcoming monograph The Perfecting of Nature? The book is about the ways that antebellum authors responded to the notion that social reform might be brought about by reforming the human body itself. This idea was a common thread in many contemporary reformist discourses—it connects such various movements as dress reform, temperance, and dietary reform. One of … Continue reading Ask an Americanist: Dr. Josh Doty
By Professor Danilo Yanich Even in the age of the Internet, political ads on local television are the most important way candidates in the United States convey their messages. That has been true for a half of a century. Political campaigns in the U.S. are based on money—a lot of it. The estimated cost of the 2020 election is $11 billion, up from $9.8 billion … Continue reading Buying Reality: Political Ads, Money and Local Television News
We are thrilled to announce that this coming Friday (30th October) at 10:00AM AEDT, we will be hosting a seminar with Professor Danilo Yanich from the Biden School of Public Policy at the University of Delaware, to discuss his latest book on money and media in American politics, the 2016 and 2020 Presidential elections. ANZASA President Jennifer Frost (University of Auckland) will introduce Professor Yanich … Continue reading Pre-Election Event – Buying Reality: Political Ads, Money and Local Television News with Professor Danilo Yanich
By Stephen Jakubowicz A comparative approach to historical analysis can reveal interesting points of comparison between historical actors that may at first seem unrelated from one another. However, emerging historical approaches examining the intersection of trade and culture promise to glean further insight into how the two are inextricably connected.[1] An offshoot of similar initiatives in Europe, the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition of 1876 offered American … Continue reading American Wool Tariffs and the Australian Colonies at the 1876 Philadelphia Exhibition
