Drafting the Past

In this episode, Kate spoke with historian Dr. Martha Hodes. Dr. Hodes is a professor of history at New York University and the author of multiple previous books focused on the nineteenth century, including The Sea Captain’s Wife: A True Story of Love, Race, and War in the Nineteenth Century, and Mourning Lincoln, which won multiple awards and was longlisted for the National Book Award. Her most recent book, however, has a very different focus. My Hijacking: A Personal History of Forgetting and Remembering, is an account of her experience as a 12-year-old hostage aboard a hijacked airliner in 1970. We talked about what it was like to write such a different type of history book, and the experience of mining her own unreliable archive for information. You’ll also learn how she ends up with as many as 20 or 25 drafts and why the best way to start a project is to pick a favorite document and just start writing about it.

For this episode I was lucky enough to speak with a historian and writer I have long admired, Dr. Catherine McNeur. Catherine’s first book, Taming Manhattan: Environmental Battles in the Antebellum City, first came out in 2014, and it is one of my favorite environmental histories. So I was more than a little excited to learn about her new book out this year, Mischievous Creatures: The Forgotten Sisters Who Transformed Early American Science. I couldn’t pass up the chance to talk with Catherine about how the book emerged out of a different book project, the techniques she uses for bringing place so vividly to the page, and the writing process that results in prose that is such a pleasure to read. Plus, this book has one of the best stories of serendipitous archival discovery I have ever heard.

For this episode, host Kate Carpenter interviews Dr. Tanisha C. Ford. Tanisha is a writer, historian, and professor of history at the City University of New York Graduate Center. She is the author of three books and many articles on subjects at the intersection of politics and culture, and especially on Black fashion and social movements. Her first book, Liberated Threads: Black Women, Style, and the Global Politics of Soul, was published in 2016, and in 2019 she released her second book, Dressed in Dreams: A Black Girl’s Love Letter to the Power of Fashion. Her newest book, Our Secret Society: Mollie Moon and the Glamour, Money, and Power Behind the Civil Rights Movement came out just last month. It’s a fascinating biography of famed Black fundraiser and activist Mollie Moon that takes readers into the world of an overlooked aspect of the civil rights era. Kate's conversation with Tanisha covers how she brought the world of Mollie Moon to life, her methods for organizing her sources--the "oldest of old school"--and why she's glad she was an English major.

In this episode Kate is joined by historian Dr. Bruce Dorsey. Bruce is a professor of history at Swarthmore College. In 2002, he published his first book, Reforming Men and Women: Gender in the Antebellum City, and he is also the co-editor of the book Crosscurrents in American Culture. His new book is called Murder in a Mill Town: Sex, Faith, and the Crime that Captivated a Nation. In it, Bruce tells the story of the death of factory worker Sarah Cornell, the trial of the Methodist preacher who was accused of her murder, and the public frenzy over the trial and its aftermath. I was thrilled to have the chance to talk with Bruce about how a historian tackles true crime, and our conversation covers how this book originated in a college course, as well as the challenge of weaving historical analysis a gripping drama.

In this episode, I interviewed Dr. Sarah McNamara, assistant professor of history at Texas A&M University, about her new book, Ybor City: Crucible of the Latina South (UNC Press, 2023). From her website: "McNamara is dedicated to sharing her scholarship with broad audiences through public history and community engagement. She developed the project, “Nuestra Historia,” an historical memory and preservation project that unites public art with historical markers within the City of Tampa. The first site of this project commemorated the 1937 Antifascist Women’s March of Ybor City and unveiled in Tampa during Women’s History Month of 2023. McNamara regularly collaborates with community groups to coordinate history programs that range from historical photography exhibits to educational events for adults and works on K-12 curriculum development and teacher training through organizations such as the National Humanities Center. McNamara’s work has received support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Association for University Women, the Institute for Citizens and Scholars, the American Historical Association, and the Tulane Center for the Gulf South. In recognition of McNamara’s commitment to teaching and student mentorship at Texas A&M University, she has received the Montague-Center for Teaching Excellence Award, the Early Career Teaching Award from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and Association of Former Students Distinguished Achievement Award for Teaching. Sarah McNamara is a native of Tampa, Florida and her family is from Ybor City." In our interview we talk about the process of writing and rewriting that book. We also talk about the marvels and challenges of doing oral histories—especially with family members—and the ways that Sarah has worked to make sure that the history she writes in her book is also alive in the community of Ybor City.

This episode features Dr. Samantha Muka, whose enthusiasm for her work is pretty much guaranteed to improve your day. Sam’s first book is Oceans Under Glass: Tank Craft and the Sciences of the Sea, in which she investigates how a community of aquarium users have created and shared knowledge about how to take care of marine life in captivity. Sam is an assistant professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology, and she is also the author of numerous articles and book chapters about the history of marine science, including essays in Slate and The Atlantic. We talked about how her enthusiasm translates into her writing voice, keeping track of non-traditional sources, and what Sam has in common with a horse (you’ll just have to listen to know what that’s about).

In this episode, I spoke with Dr. Katrina Phillips. Katie Phillips is an associate professor of history at Macalester College. She is the author of Staging Indigeneity: Salvage Tourism and Performances of Native American History, which focuses on the past and present of three Western performances that purport to show Indigenous history, but do so from the perspective of white settlers. Katie is a citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe. She is also a public historian and consultant, and, to my delight, she has also published multiple children’s books about Indigenous history. Our conversation covers the importance of making history accessible, the value of an intellectual community that says things like “this has to be in the book,” and how writing for kids lets her reach a whole new set of readers. 

Welcome back to Drafting the Past, a podcast about the craft of writing history. I’m your host, Kate Carpenter, and this is the 30th episode of Drafting the Past! In this episode, I spoke with Dr. Lauren Lassabe Shepherd about the process of writing and revising her debut book, Resistance from the Right: Conservatives and the Campus Wars (UNC Press, 2023). Lauren is a historian of higher education, and she teaches at the University of New Orleans. We had this conversation early this year when Lauren was still in the process of going over final page proofs, so you’ll hear us talking about that stage of publication. But the book is out now, and you can find it at any bookseller. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy our conversation about the hard work of turning a dissertation into a book, interdisciplinarity and imposter syndrome, and how to organize the results of a smash and grab archive trip, something I think a lot of us can relate to. Here’s my conversation with Dr. Lauren Lassabe Shepherd.

My guest this week is historian Dr. Anna Zeide. Anna is an associate professor of history at Virginia Tech, where she is also the founding director of the food studies program, as well as the author of two books. The first, Canned: The Rise and Fall of Consumer Confidence in the American Food Industry, won a James Beard award, and her most recent book, U.S. History in 15 Foods, was published earlier this year. Incidentally, reading that book inspired me to plant corn in my home garden for the first time ever, so stay tuned on that experiment. She is also a co-editor of an anthology called Acquired Tastes: Stories About the Origins of Modern Foods. In our delightful conversation, we talked about everything from putting together a writing outline to taking a metaphorical—or literal—wander through the woods as part of the writing process.

In this episode, it was my pleasure to interview science journalist Melissa Sevigny about her new book, Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Colorado River. She is the science reporter for Arizona Public Radio as well as the author of two previous books, Mythical River: Chasing the Mirage of New Water in the American Southwest, and Under Desert Skies: How Tucson Mapped the Way to the Moon and Planets. Her work has also appeared in many places, including Orion, The Atavist Magazine, Science Friday, and more. I spoke with Melissa about writing a book while working a full time job as a reporter, how she created such detailed scenes, and the helpful metaphor she used to think about the book’s narrative structure.