New Books in American Studies

In the early years of American independence, Methodism emerged as the new republic’s fastest growing religious movement and its largest voluntary association. Following the contours of settler expansion, the Methodist Episcopal Church also quickly became the largest denomination in the early American West. With Sacred Capital: Methodism and Settler Colonialism in the Empire of Liberty (University of Virginia Press, 2024), Dr. Hunter Price resituates the Methodist Episcopal Church as a settler-colonial institution at the convergence of “the Methodist Age” and Jefferson’s “Empire of Liberty.”Dr. Price offers a novel interpretation of the Methodist Episcopal Church as a network through which mostly white settlers exchanged news of land and jobs and facilitated financial transactions. Benefiting from Indigenous dispossession and removal policies, settlers made selective, strategic use of the sacred and the secular in their day-to-day interactions to advance themselves and their interests. By analyzing how Methodists acted as settlers while identifying as pilgrims, Dr. Price illuminates the ways that ordinary white Americans fulfilled Jefferson’s vision of an Empire of Liberty while reinforcing the inequalities at its core.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

Political Scientists Lauren C. Bell, Allison Rank, and Carah Ong Whaley have a new edited volume, Civic Pedagogies: Teaching Civic Engagement in an Era of Divisive Politics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024). This book has four separate sections that guide the reader through different dimensions of teaching civic engagement and the many aspects of this important pedagogical capacity that often falls on the shoulders of political science faculty at universities and colleges in the United States. In our discussion we cover the idea of civic engagement itself as an approach that many of us integrate into our courses in a variety of ways. Civic Pedagogies focuses on this complex topic first through a number of chapters that dive into the theory behind civic engagement and how to think about this concept as a dimension of or the entirety of a college course. The next section of the book takes up a variety of different practical approaches to embedding civic learning into courses. The last two sections of the book explore the challenges and benefits of civically engaged pedagogies and, finally, assessment of civically engaged pedagogies.This is a thorough and thoughtful book with an impressive array of contributing authors all thinking about not only the importance of civically engaged pedagogies, but also the unique dimensions of this kind of pedagogy. The three editors explain, in our conversation, different points of importances that were fleshed out by the many contributors and their thinking about how best to embed this vital component of education within a democracy. Civic Pedagogies: Teaching Civic Engagement in an Era of Divisive Politics has so many different perspectives that it provides a rich array of options for most educators who want or need to integrate civic pedagogies into their classrooms. In our discussion, we also explore the value of being able to engage on public topics and political questions in a civil manner—both in the classroom itself and then, as students move into their lives beyond college, as members of their communities.Lilly J. Goren is a professor of political science at Carroll University in Waukesha, WI. She is co-host of the New Books in Political Science channel at the New Books Network. She is co-editor of The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (University Press of Kansas, 2022), as well as co-editor of the award winning book, Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics (University Press of Kentucky, 2012). She can be reached @gorenlj.bsky.social Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

In November 1839, a group of young women in Boston formed a conversation society "to answer the great questions" of special importance to women: "What are we born to do? How shall we do it?" The lives and works of the five women who discussed these questions are at the center of Bright Circle, a group biography of remarkable thinkers and artists who played pathbreaking roles in the transcendentalist movement.Transcendentalism remains the most important literary and philosophical movement to have originated in the United States. Most accounts of it, however, trace its emergence to a group of young intellectuals (primarily Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau) dissatisfied with their religious, literary, and social culture. Yet there is a forgotten history of transcendentalism--a submerged counternarrative--that features a network of fiercely intelligent women who were central to the development of the movement even as they found themselves silenced by their culturally-assigned roles as women.Bright Circle: Five Remarkable Women in the Age of Transcendentalism (Oxford UP, 2024) is intended to reorient our understanding of transcendentalism: to help us see the movement as a far more collaborative and interactive project between women and men than is commonly understood. It recounts the lives of Mary Moody Emerson, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, Lydia Jackson Emerson, and Margaret Fuller as they developed crucial ideas about the self, nature, and feeling even as they pushed their male counterparts to consider the rights of enslaved people of color and women.Many ideas once considered original to Emerson and Thoreau are shown to have originated with women who had little opportunity of publicly expressing them. Together, the five women of Bright Circle helped form the foundations of American feminism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

In this episode, Henry Louis Gates and Robert P. George share a powerful conversation about their unlikely beginnings in West Virginia. Recorded in December 2024, they reflect on their childhoods, the challenges they faced, and the experiences that shaped their paths to becoming the influential figures they are today. Their discussion offers a unique perspective on overcoming adversity, the power of place, and the importance of intellectual curiosity. Tune in for an inspiring and personal dialogue that highlights how humble beginnings can lead to extraordinary futures.Madison’s Notes is the podcast of Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions.Contributions to and/or sponsorship of any speaker does not constitute departmental or institutional endorsement of the specific program, speakers or views presented. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

At a moment when the nuclear nonproliferation regime is under duress, Rebecca Davis Gibbons provides a trenchant analysis of the international system that has, for more than fifty years, controlled the spread of these catastrophic weapons. The Hegemon's Tool Kit: US Leadership and the Politics of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Regime (Cornell UP, 2022) details how that regime works and how, disastrously, it might falter.Experts anticipated that all technologically capable states would build these powerful devices in the early nuclear age. That did not happen. Widespread development of nuclear arms did not occur, in large part, because a global nuclear nonproliferation regime was created. By the late 1960s, the United States and the Soviet Union had drafted the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). Across decades, the regime has expanded, with more agreements and more nations participating. As a result, in 2022, only nine states possess nuclear weapons.Why do most international states adhere to the nuclear nonproliferation regime? The answer lies, Gibbons asserts, in decades of painstaking efforts undertaken by the US government. As the most powerful state during the nuclear age, the United States had many tools with which to persuade other states to join or otherwise support nonproliferation agreements.The waning of US global influence, Gibbons shows in The Hegemon's Tool Kit, is a key threat to the nonproliferation regime. So, too, is the deepening global divide over progress on nuclear disarmament. To date, the Chinese government is not taking significant steps to support the nuclear nonproliferation regime, and as a result, the regime may face a harmful leadership gap.Our guest is Rebecca Gibbons, an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Southern Maine.Our host is Eleonora Mattiacci, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. She is the author of "Volatile States in International Politics" (Oxford University Press, 2023), winner of the 2025 ISA-ISSS best book award. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

In this episode of International Horizons, RBI Director John Torpey speaks with Steven Brint, Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Public Policy at UC Riverside, about the early days of the second Trump administration and its impact on higher education. Brint discusses the administration’s aggressive efforts to reshape federal governance, including its attacks on DEI programs, proposals to tax university endowments, and moves to condition federal funding on ideological compliance. The conversation explores how these policies could undermine academic freedom, international student enrollment, and the global reputation of U.S. universities. Brint also examines the broader crisis of public confidence in higher education, tracing concerns over cost, curriculum relevance, and perceptions of political bias. The episode concludes with a discussion of the risks facing the American university system in an era of rising authoritarianism and political polarization. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

In Love You Madly, Holly Woodlawn (Feral House, 2025), Jeff Copeland brings readers into Hollywood in the 1980s and shares his story of writing a book about one of the most infamous of Warhol's Superstars. A young, aspiring writer desperate for a break...and the legendary Andy Warhol superstar who gave him the story of a lifetime. By the mid-1980s, Holly Woodlawn, once lauded by George Cukor for her performance in the 1970 Warhol production and Paul Morrissey directed Trash, was washed up. Over. Kaput. She was living in a squalid Hollywood apartment with her dog and bottles of Chardonnay. A chance meeting with starry-eyed corn-fed Missouri-born Jeff Copeland, who moved to Hollywood with dreams of 'making it' as a television writer, changed the course of BOTH of their lives forever. Love You Madly, Holly Woodlawn is a story of how an unlikely friendship with a young gay writer and an, ahem, mature trans actress and performer created the bestselling autobiography of 1991, A Low Life in High Heels. This book about writing a book is a celebration of chutzpa and love as Holly, the embodiment of Auntie Mame, introduces Jeff to the glamorous (and sometimes larcenous) world of a Warhol Superstar. In turn, Jeff uses his writing (and typing) talent to give Holly the second chance at fame she craved. In turns hilarious and heartwarming, Love You Madly, Holly Woodlawn is a portrait of the real Holly who loved deeply, laughed loudly, and left mayhem in her wake. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Two centuries ago, London school reformer Joseph Lancaster swept into New York City to revolutionize its public schools. Pennsylvania and Massachusetts passed laws mandating Lancaster's methods, and cities such as Albany, Savannah, Detroit, and Baltimore soon followed. In Mr. Lancaster's System: The Failed Reform That Created America's Public Schools (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024), Adam Laats tells the story of how this abusive, scheming reformer fooled the world into believing his system could provide free high-quality education for poor children. The system never worked as promised, but thanks to real work done by students, teachers, and families, Lancaster's failed reforms eventually led to the creation of the modern public school system.Lancaster's idea was simple: instead of hiring expensive adult teachers, Lancasterian schools made children teach one another to read, write, and behave properly. America's city leaders poured the equivalent of millions of dollars into the scheme, built specialized school buildings featuring Lancaster's teaching machines, and offered him a huge salary. In London, where Lancaster opened his first school, the enthusiasm of city leaders was quickly and similarly followed by scandal and dismay. Lancaster borrowed money—even from the king of England—and spent it on fancy carriage rides and cases of champagne. Even worse, Lancaster proved to be a sexual predator. Kicked out of London, Lancaster brought his simplistic plan to the United States. His school model didn't work any better in US cities than it had in London, and Lancaster himself never changed his abusive ways.Mr. Lancaster's System details how American cities created their first public schools out of the wreckage of Lancasterian failure. In the end, the most important people in this story are not self-proclaimed geniuses like Lancaster or elites like New York's mayor De Witt Clinton, but rather the thousands of parents and children who forced urban public schools to assume their modern shape.Adam Laats is a professor of education and history at Binghamton University. He taught high school for many years in Milwaukee and is the author of The Other School Reformers and Fundamentalist U.Max Jacobs is a PhD student in education at Rutgers University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

From Darwin's The Origin of Species to the twenty-first century, Peter Bowler reinterprets the long Darwinian Revolution by refocussing our attention on the British and American public. By applying recent historical interest in popular science to evolutionary ideas, he investigates how writers and broadcasters have presented both Darwinism and its discontents. Casting new light on how the theory's more radical aspects gradually grew in the public imagination, Evolution for the People: Shaping Popular Ideas from Darwin to the Present (Cambridge UP, 2024) extends existing studies of the popularization of evolutionism to give a more comprehensive picture of how attitudes have changed through time. In tracing changes in public perception, Bowler explores both the cultural impact and the cultural exploitation of these ideas in science, religion, social thought and literature. The first comprehensive study of popular evolutionism from the 1860s to the present day Reassesses the impact of Darwinism on the wider public through the study of popular science Provides insights beyond the study of popular science relevant to cultural history, the history of religion, and the history of social though Peter J. Bowler is Professor Emeritus of the History of Science at Queen's University Belfast, a fellow of the British Academy, a member of the Royal Irish Academy and a past president of the British Society for the History of Science.Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

The Business of Bobbysoxers: Cultural Production in 1940s Frank Sinatra Fandom (Oxford University Press, 2024) by Dr. Katie Beisel Hollenbach reconsiders the story of American popular music, celebrity following, and fan behavior during World War II through close examination of “bobbysoxers.” Preserved in popular memory as primarily white, hysterical, teen girl devotees of Frank Sinatra clad in bobby socks and saddle shoes, these girls were accused of displaying inappropriate behavior and priorities in their obsessive pursuit of a crooning celebrity at a time of international crisis. Dr. Beisel Hollenbach peels back the stereotypes of girlhood idol adoration by documenting the intimate practices of wartime Sinatra fan clubs, revealing a new side of this familiar story in American history through the perspective of the bobbysoxer.In World War II America, fan clubs and organizations like Teen Canteens offered a haven for teenage girls to celebrate their enjoyment of popular culture while cultivating relationships with each other through media icons and the entertainment industry. Many of these organizations attempted to encourage diverse memberships, influenced in part by Frank Sinatra's public work on racial and religious tolerance, and by Sinatra's own identity as an Italian American. Away from the critical public eye, these communities offered girls a place to safely explore and discuss issues including civil rights, politics, the war, patriotism, internationalism, and professional development in the context of their shared Sinatra fandom. With these broader social and political complexities in mind, The Business of Bobbysoxers shines a light on musical fan communities that provided teenage girls with peer groups at a critical moment of personal and historical change, allowing them to creatively express their desires and imagine their futures as American women together.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