The Modern Scholar Podcast

Dr. Katherine Kornei is a freelance science writer based in Portland, Oregon. She covers Earth and space science for outlets such as Science News, Scientific American, and The New York Times. Katherine has reported stories from Asia, Europe, and the United States. She holds a BS in astrophysics from Yale University and an MS and PhD in astronomy from the University of California, Los Angeles. The article that we reference during the conversation can be found here, at Civil Eats.

Dr. Suzanne Sutherland is an Associate Professor of History and General Education Director at Middle Tennessee State University. Dr. Sutherland’s teaching and research focus on the relationships between war and other developments in the early modern period including the scientific revolution, the republic of letters, and the growth of states and empires. Dr. Sutherland has been involved in multiple collaborative and interdisciplinary projects including Mapping the Republic of Letters as well as the Stanford-based “Early Modern Mobility: Knowledge, Communication, and Transportation, 1500-1800.” Finally, she serves as a Subject Editor for the digital Routledge Encyclopedia of the Renaissance World and Digital Humanities Track Director for The Sixteenth Century Society and Conference. She is the author of The Rise of the Military Entrepreneur: War, Diplomacy, and Knowledge in Hapsburg Europe, which is the subject of our conversation today.

Dr. Terilyn Johnson Huntington is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, where she also works with the Center for Teaching Excellence, is involved with student mentorship programs, and serves on the Faculty Senate. Dr. Huntington received her MA and PhD in political science from the University of Kansas, but prior to her time at Kansas she also completed a masters in international studies at the University of Denver and a masters in Theological Studies from Bethel Theological Seminary. Her research has focused on the impact of drone warfare and targeted killing as well as military intervention, and now—perhaps most fascinating of all—the interconnections between major league baseball and national security!

Dr. Katherine Carroll is an Associate Professor of political science at Vanderbilt University. She earned her MA (1996) and PhD (2001) from the University of Virginia’s Department of Politics with a specialization in the comparative politics of the Middle East. She came to Vanderbilt University in 2001 as the Assistant Dean of the College of Arts and Science. After five years in administration, she moved to teaching full time in the Department of Political Science where she offers courses on the Middle East, the war in Iraq, comparative politics, and the U.S. military. From 2009 until 2019 she also directed Vanderbilt’s undergraduate major in Public Policy Studies and has continued to serve as the Associate Director since 2019. In 2008 and 2009 she took a leave of absence from Vanderbilt to work as a social scientist on a Human Terrain Team in Baghdad, Iraq. These teams were developed to provide expert social and political advice to brigade commanders and soldiers on the ground in war zones. Her publications include “Not Your Parents’ Political Party: Young Sunnis and the New Iraqi Democracy” (Middle East Policy, Fall 2011), “Tribal Law and Reconciliation in the New Iraq” (Middle East Journal, Winter 2011), and Business as Usual? Economic Reform in Jordan (Lexington Press, 2003). William B. Hickman is a retired Major General in the U.S. Army, with 36 years of experience supporting our European Allies, deployments in support of operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Middle East, and strategic and operational assignments focused on U.S. national security. His last assignment was as the Strategic Plans and Policy Director for the NATO Allied Transformation Command, Norfolk, VA. During this assignment, the Plans and Policy Directorate drafted Political and Military Alliance-wide strategic concepts, published the Strategic Foresight Analysis 2017 Report, studied strategic level decision-making through participation in NATO Crisis Management Exercises and provided recommendations to improve Alliance decision-making, and assisted the Nations in drafting the Alliance’s first military strategy since the Cold War. Hickman earned his bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Vanderbilt University in 1983 and was commissioned as a second lieutenant through the ROTC program. He later earned a Master’s Degree in Business Administration from Vanderbilt University and a Master’s Degree in National Security and Strategic Studies from the Naval War College. Together Dr. Carroll and General Hickman are co-editors of the book Understanding the U.S. Military, which is the subject of our conversation today.

Major Ben Griffin is the Chief of the Military History Division in the History Department at the United States Military Academy. He is the author of the recently published Reagan’s War Stories which examines how the Reagan Administration used fiction to think about the military balance of power in Europe and throughout the world. Ben holds a PhD and MA in History from the University of Texas at Austin, a MA in International Security Studies from the University of Arizona, and a BS in History from the United States Military Academy. He commissioned as a Military Intelligence Officer after his graduation from West Point in 2006 and has been stationed at Ft Drum, NY, Ft Hood, TX, and Ft Riley KS, as well deploying twice to Iraq in support of Operations Iraqi Freedom and New Dawn. As always when speaking with guests employed by the Federal Government is important to point out that Major Griffin’s comments represent his opinions alone and do not represent the views of the U.S. Military Academy, the U.S. Army, or the Department of Defense.

Dr. David Gellman is Professor of History at DePauw University, where he has taught since 1999. His book Liberty’s Chain: Slavery, Abolition, and the Jay Family of New York was published in Spring 2022 by Three Hills, and imprint of Cornell University Press. Among his other publications are Emancipating New York: The Politics of Slavery and Freedom, 1777-1827 and Jim Crow New York: A Documentary History of Race and Citizenship, 1777-1877. Both were selected as Choice Outstanding Academic Titles. He is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of the Early Republic and has held research fellowships at the Huntington Library, the American Antiquarian Society, and the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition. In addition, he has published two essays on rock legend Bruce Springsteen and is co-host of a long-running music radio show on WGRE, 91.5 FM, in Greencastle, Indiana.

Today I visited the Twinsburg Public Library in Twinsburg, Ohio to deliver a book talk about my book Rise of the Mavericks—the last book event of the year! It was a very special opportunity, because this is the library where I started my library career, first as a volunteer and then as a page, shelving books! Cari is the assistant director here, and so we took a few minutes to visit about the library and about the role of libraries in their communities. Enjoy!

Betsy Rohaly Smoot is an intelligence historian interested in early twentieth-century cryptology and communications who has published articles in both Cryptologia and Intelligence and National Security. She spent 34 years at the National Security Agency as an analyst, manager, and, for her final ten years, as a historian in the Center for Cryptologic History. She is the author of the newly released book Parker Hitt: The Father of American Military Cryptology (University Press of Kentucky) and the forthcoming From the Ground Up: American Cryptology During World War I (the Center for Cryptologic History). Betsy holds a BA from Mary Washington College and an MS in Strategic Intelligence from what is now the National Intelligence University. Betsy and I have crossed paths over the years during the Society for Military History annual conferences and I’m very excited to have her on the show today and hear about her new book exploring the life of Parker Hitt!

Dr. Rebecca Sharpless is a Professor of History at Texas Christian University, where she teaches American history, women’s history, history of food in America, the history of Texas, and Southern history. She is a past-president of the Oral History Association, a past-president of the Southern Association for Women Historians, and she has also served on the Executive Council of the Texas State Historical Association. She is the author of numerous books and articles, including Fertile Ground, Narrow Choices: Women on Texas Cotton Farms, 1900-1940, Cooking in Other Women’s Kitchens: Domestic Workers in the South, 1865-1960, and her most recent book Grain and Fire: A History of Baking in the American South, which is the subject of our conversation today.

Dr. Jacqueline Hazelton is Executive Editor of the journal International Security at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School. Dr. Hazelton came to the Belfer Center from the Naval War College where she was an Associate Professor in the Department of Strategy and Policy. At the Naval War College, Hazelton taught strategy and policy to U.S. and international military officers and their civilian equivalents. Her courses for officers focused on understanding the political effects of military force and how to translate military strategy into desired policy outcomes. Hazelton’s research ranges from grand strategy, great power military intervention, and U.S. foreign and military policy to counterinsurgency, terrorism, and the uses of military power. She recently published Bullets Not Ballots: Success in Counterinsurgency Warfare and is working on a manuscript about great powers and military interventions.