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
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
Amanda Brickell Bellows is a lecturer in history at The New School. Her upcoming book American Slavery and Russian Serfdom in the Post-Emancipation Imagination will be out with UNC Press in June 2020 and is available for pre-orders on Amazon. What brought you to your PhD topic that resulted in your upcoming monograph, American Slavery and Russian Serfdom in the Post-Emancipation Imagination? American … Continue reading Ask an Americanist: Dr Amanda Bellows
Dr Julian Chambliss is a Professor of History and English at Michigan State University. He is involved in a number of digital humanities projects and serves as a core faculty member in the Critical Diversity in a Digital Age Initiative. He teaches courses exploring critical making, comics, and culture in the United States and has been recognized for his community engagement work with a Rollins … Continue reading Ask an Americanist: Professor Julian Chambliss
Diana Shahinyan received her PhD, “Authors at Law – the Jurisprudence of Investigation in the Detective Fictions of Dashiell Hammett and William Faulkner” from Sydney University in 2014, and currently works there as a casual academic. She has recently published articles in the Journal of Victorian Cultures, and the Australian Humanities Review. Her research straddles the nexus of law and literature, and she is currently … Continue reading Ask An Americanist: Dr Diana Shahinyan
Dr Yves Rees is a David Myers Research Fellow in History at La Trobe University. They are a historian of Australia in the world, with particular interests in gender, modernity, mobility and whiteness. You can follow Yves on Twitter at @AnneLRees Q: Tell us a little about your background. History has been a passion since childhood and ‘historian’ was my career objective from … Continue reading Ask an Americanist: Dr Yves Rees
Dr Nicholas Ferns is a historian of international development, colonialism, and foreign aid who lectures at Monash University. His recently completed PhD thesis, “Beyond Colombo: Australian and Colonial Foreign Policy in the Age of International Development, 1945-75,” examined the ways that postwar notions of international development informed Australian policy in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. He has published widely in academic journals and The Conversation, and is … Continue reading Ask an Americanist: Dr Nicholas Ferns
Dr Emma Hamilton is a Lecturer of History in the English Language and Foundation Studies Centre at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Her first monograph, Masculinities in American Western Films: A Hyper-Linear History, was published in 2016 and she has recently released a co-edited collection, Unbridling the Western Film Auteur. Her research interests include representation and cultural studies, especially film and history, and representations of … Continue reading Ask An Americanist: Dr Emma Hamilton
