New Books in American Studies

Earning critical acclaim and commercial success upon its 1998 release, Rushmore-the sophomore film of American auteur Wes Anderson-quickly gained the status of a cult classic. A melancholic coming-of-age story wrapped in comedy drama, Rushmore focuses on the efforts of Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman)-a brazen and precocious fifteen-year-old-to find his way. Restless, energetic, struggling, and overcompensating for his insecurities, Max pursues a dizzying range of possible futures, leading him into the orbit of local steel magnate Herman Blume (Bill Murray), elementary school teacher Rosemary Cross (Olivia Williams), and a host of cooperative schoolmates who help him to stage lavish film-derivative plays.Kristi McKim's book Rushmore (British Film Institute, 2023) argues that despite the film's titular call for haste and excess (rush/more), it challenges a drive toward perfectionism and celebrates the quiet connections that defy such passion and speed. After establishing Rushmore's history and reception, McKim closely reads Rushmore's energetic musical montages relative to slower moments that introduce tenderness and ambiguity, in a form subtler than Max's desire-built drive or genre-based plays.Her analysis offers an urgent corrective to what might be perceived as an endearing portrait of privilege that perpetuates a status quo power. Drawing out Rushmore's subtleties that soften, temper, ease, expand, and equalize the film's zeal, she reads the film with a generosity learned from the film itself.Peter C. Kunze is an assistant professor of communication at Tulane University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Today’s book is: Leading From the Margins: College Leadership from Unexpected Places (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024), by Dr. Mary Dana Hinton, which is a guide to why people from marginalized backgrounds may be uniquely qualified to become effective higher education leaders―and how they can get there. Students and faculty in higher education increasingly reflect more diverse backgrounds, but this diversity remains rare in many leadership roles. In Leading from the Margins, Dr. Hinton celebrates the unique strengths of marginalized individuals, inviting them to embrace their leadership potential and make a difference. Drawing from Dr. Hinton's own journey to becoming a university president, this book challenges conventional leadership theories and highlights the value of diverse voices. This book is a vital resource for people in higher education aspiring to senior leadership positions who feel unheard or unrepresented in traditional leadership roles. Leading from the Margins is an essential read for anyone seeking to foster inclusive and effective leadership, bridging the gap between theory and lived experiences. Whether you're an emerging or established leader, Leading from the Margins will empower you to find your own leadership style and discover strength in unexpected places.Our guest is: Dr. Mary Dana Hinton, who is the 13th president of Hollins University. An active and respected proponent of the liberal arts and inclusion, her leadership reflects a deep and abiding commitment to educational equity and the education of women. Dr. Hinton was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, an organization established more than 240 years ago by the nation’s founders to honor exceptionally accomplished individuals and engage them in advancing the public good. Her scholarship focuses on higher education leadership, strategic planning, the role of education in peace building, African American religious history, and inclusion in higher education. She is the author of The Commercial Church: Black Churches and the New Religious Marketplace in America, and of Leading from the Margins: College Leadership from Unexpected Places.Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, the producer of the Academic Life podcast. She holds a PhD in history, which she uses to explore what stories we tell and what happens to those we never tell.Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. You can support the show by downloading and sharing episodes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Years ago, when O. Henry Prize-winning writer Crystal Wilkinson was baking a jam cake, she felt her late grandmother’s presence. She soon realized that she was not the only cook in her kitchen; there were her ancestors, too, stirring, measuring, and braising alongside her. These are her kitchen ghosts, five generations of Black women who settled in Appalachia and made a life, a legacy, and a cuisine.An expert cook, Wilkinson shares nearly forty family recipes rooted deep in the past, full of flavor—delicious favorites including Corn Pudding, Chicken and Dumplings, Granny Christine’s Jam Cake, and Praisesong Biscuits, brought to vivid life through stunning photography. Together, Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks (Clarkson Potter, 2023) honors the mothers who came before, the land that provided for generations of her family, and the untold heritage of Black Appalachia.As the keeper of her family’s stories and treasured dishes, Wilkinson shares her inheritance in Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts. She found their stories in her apron pockets, floating inside the steam of hot mustard greens and tucked into the sweet scent of clove and cinnamon in her kitchen. Part memoir, part cookbook, Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts weaves those stories together with recipes, family photos, and a lyrical imagination to present a culinary portrait of a family that has lived and worked the earth of the mountains for over a century. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

To begin the celebration of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, this episode features a conversation with Dr. Catherine Ceniza Choy about her book Asian American Histories of the United States (Beacon Press, 2022). Choy’s study identifies pivotal years in Asian American history as the focus of her eight chapters, which includes the beginning of Asian exclusionary policy with the Page Law in 1875, the rapid changes of 1965 and 1969, which saw a growing Asian America in understanding and demographics, to 2020 and the impact of COVID-19 pandemic. In just 175 pages, Choy weaves together the layered histories of exclusion, violence, and resistance to rectify the generalizations that come from a “misunderstanding of Asian Americans and their histories” (Preface, ix). Catherine Ceniza Choy is an award-winning Asian American historian and professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Global Families: A History of Asian International Adoption in America and Empire of Care: Nursing and Migration in Filipino American History, which won the 2003 American Journal of Nursing History and Public Policy Book Award and the 2005 Association for Asian American Studies History Book Award. An engaged public scholar, Choy has been interviewed in many media outlets, including ABC’s 20/20, The Atlantic, CNN, the Los Angeles Times, NBC News, and Vox, about the history of anti-Asian hate and violence as well as the connections between racism and misogyny.Donna Doan Anderson (she/her) is a PhD candidate in History and Asian American Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Emily Dickinson and Charles Darwin were born at a time when the science of studying the natural world was known as natural philosophy, a pastime for poets, priests, and schoolgirls. The world began to change in the 1830s, while Darwin was exploring the Pacific aboard the Beagle and Dickinson was a student in Amherst, Massachusetts. Poetry and science started to grow apart, and modern thinkers challenged the old orthodoxies, offering thrilling new perspectives that suddenly felt radical--and too dangerous for women.Natural Magic: Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin, and the Dawn of Modern Science (Princeton UP, 2024) intertwines the stories of these two luminary nineteenth-century minds whose thought and writings captured the awesome possibilities of the new sciences and at the same time strove to preserve the magic of nature. Just as Darwin's work was informed by his roots in natural philosophy and his belief in the interconnectedness of all life, Dickinson's poetry was shaped by her education in botany, astronomy, and chemistry, and by her fascination with the enchanting possibilities of Darwinian science. Casting their two very different careers in an entirely fresh light, Renée Bergland brings to life a time when ideas about science were rapidly evolving, reshaped by poets, scientists, philosophers, and theologians alike. She paints a colorful portrait of a remarkable century that transformed how we see the natural world.Illuminating and insightful, Natural Magic explores how Dickinson and Darwin refused to accept the separation of art and science. Today, more than ever, we need to reclaim their shared sense of ecological wonder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

In the early nineteenth century, the American commercial marketplace was a chaotic, unregulated environment in which knock-offs and outright frauds thrived. Appearances could be deceiving, and entrepreneurs often relied on their personal reputations to close deals and make sales. Rapid industrialization and expanding trade routes opened new markets with enormous potential, but how could distant merchants convince potential customers, whom they had never met, that they could be trusted? Through wide-ranging visual and textual evidence, including a robust selection of early advertisements, Branding Trust: Advertising and Trademarks in Nineteenth-Century America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023) by Dr. Jennifer M. Black tells the story of how advertising evolved to meet these challenges, tracing the themes of character and class as they intertwined with and influenced graphic design, trademark law, and ideas about ethical business practice in the United States.As early as the 1830s, printers, advertising agents, and manufacturers collaborated to devise new ways to advertise goods. They used eye-catching designs and fonts to grab viewers’ attention and wove together meaningful images and prose to gain the public’s trust. At the same time, manufacturers took legal steps to safeguard their intellectual property, formulating new ways to protect their brands by taking legal action against counterfeits and frauds. By the end of the nineteenth century, these advertising and legal strategies came together to form the primary components of modern branding: demonstrating character, protecting goodwill, entertaining viewers to build rapport, and deploying the latest graphic innovations in print. Trademarks became the symbols that embodied these ideas—in print, in the law, and to the public.Branding Trust thus identifies and explains the visual rhetoric of trust and legitimacy that has come to reign over American capitalism. Though the 1920s has often been held up as the birth of modern advertising, Dr. Black argues that advertising professionals had in fact learned how to navigate public relations over the previous century by adapting the language, imagery, and ideas of the American middle class.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Whether you are a commuter weighing options of taking the bus vs walking to get you to work on time or a military general leading troops into war, risk is something we deal with every day. Even the most cautious of us can’t opt out—the question is always which risks to take to maximize our results. But how do we know which path is correct? Enter Allison Schrager. Schrager is not a typical economist. Like others, she has spent her career assessing risk, but instead of crunching numbers or sitting at a desk, she chose to venture out. Now, she travels to unexpected places to uncover how financial principles can be used to navigate hazards and prevent danger. In her new book An Economist Walks Into A Brothel And Other Unexpected Places to Understand Risk (Portfolio, 2019), Schrager puts together a five-pronged approach for understanding and assessing risk. First, she helps define what risk and reward mean for individuals. Then, taking into account irrationality and uncertainty, Schrager helps readers master their domains and ultimately get the biggest bang for what she calls the “risk buck.” While there are certain factors that cannot be predicted, An Economist Walks Into A Brothelmarries financial economics with real life examples to provide a road map, offer concrete advice, and maximize payoff. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Labor and race have shared a complex, interconnected history in America. For decades, key aspects of work—from getting a job to workplace norms to advancement and mobility—ignored and failed Black people. While explicit discrimination no longer occurs, and organizations make internal and public pledges to honor and achieve “diversity,” inequities persist through what Dr. Adia Harvey Wingfield calls the “gray areas:” the relationships, networks, and cultural dynamics integral to companies that are now more important than ever. The reality is that Black employees are less likely to be hired, stall out at middle levels, and rarely progress to senior leadership positions.Dr. Wingfield has spent a decade examining inequality in the workplace, interviewing over two hundred Black subjects across professions about their work lives. In Gray Areas: How the Way We Work Perpetuates Racism and What We Can Do to Fix It (Amistad Press, 2023), she introduces seven of them: Alex, a worker in the gig economy Max, an emergency medicine doctor; Constance, a chemical engineer; Brian, a filmmaker; Amalia, a journalist; Darren, a corporate vice president; and Kevin, who works for a nonprofit.In this accessible and important antiracist work, Dr. Wingfield chronicles their experiences and blends them with history and surprising data that starkly show how old models of work are outdated and detrimental. She demonstrates the scope and breadth of gray areas and offers key insights and suggestions for how they can be fixed, including shifting hiring practices to include Black workers; rethinking organizational cultures to centralize Black employees’ experience; and establishing pathways that move capable Black candidates into leadership roles. These reforms would create workplaces that reflect America’s increasingly diverse population—professionals whose needs organizations today are ill-prepared to meet.It’s time to prepare for a truly equitable, multiracial future and move our culture forward. To do so, we must address the gray areas in our workspaces today. This definitive work shows us how.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Dr. Melody Yunzi Li discusses contemporary Chinese diasporic narratives and cultural productions, focusing on how the characters in these stories create multilayered maps that transcend territorial boundaries. These 'maps' offer different paths for finding a sense of home, reflecting the psycho-geography of homemaking for diasporic communities. The podcast explores themes of cultural identity, belonging, and nostalgia, delving into the impact of political turmoil and the pandemic on identity and community building in the Chinese diaspora.

Black Freethinkers: A History of African American Secularism (Northwestern University Press, 2019) by Christopher Cameron, an Associate Professor of history at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, is a precise and nuanced history of African American secularism from the early nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. This text is written with economy and clarity as defined by four concise chapters that detail the major moments in African American history including some discussion of Reconstruction, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Civil Rights-Black Power era. Traversing nearly two centuries of black thought, from the Antebellum period to the demise of the Black Power era, Black Freethinkers is the first comprehensive historical survey of black free thought. For Cameron, free thought encompasses atheism, agnosticism, deism, paganism and other non-traditional modes of thinking. Cameron’s work focuses primarily on the ideas advanced by African American men and women of letters such as Frederick Douglass, Zora Neale Hurston, Nella Larsen, Lorraine Hansberry, and James Baldwin to support his core argument that freethought and “unbelief” have been key elements of Black thought since the era of enslavement to the institutionalization of free thought oriented associations in African American society.Cameron’s work forces us to rethink the way we study the era of enslavement and African American culture, and the place of Douglass as an American intellectual central to this history, as well as the role of religion in Black life more generally. In many respects, his text presents a more humanistic portrait of African American thought and culture from a historical perspective that goes well beyond most texts on this subject.Hettie V. Williams Ph.D., has taught survey courses in U.S. history, Western Civilization, and upper division courses on the history of African Americans at the university level for more than fifteen years. Her teaching and research interests include: African American intellectual history, gender in U.S. history, and race/ethnicity studies. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor of African American history in the Department of History and Anthropology at Monmouth University where she teaches courses in African American history and U.S. history. She has published book chapters, essays, and encyclopedia entries and edited/authored five books. Her latest publications include Bury My Heart in a Free Land: Black Women Intellectuals in Modern U.S. History (Praeger, 2017) and, with Dr. G. Reginald Daniel, professor of historical sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Race and the Obama Phenomenon: The Vision of a More Perfect Multiracial Union (University Press of Mississippi 2014). You can learn more about her work here or follow her on twitter (@DrHettie2017).  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies