This episode features a conversation with Dr. Michael R. Jin regarding his recently published book Citizens, Immigrants, and the Stateless: The Japanese American Diaspora in the Pacific. Published in November 2021 by Stanford University Press, the book weaves together Jin’s specializations in migration and diaspora studies, Asian American history, critical r ... Show More
Mar 2025
Tom Lynch, "Outback and Out West: The Settler-Colonial Environmental Imaginary" (U Nebraska Press, 2022)
People make sense of the world through stories, and stories about places inevitably shape how we treat, live on, and use those places. In Outback and Out West: The Settler Colonial Environmental Imaginary (U Nebraska Press, 2022), emeritus professor of English at the University o ... Show More
1h 4m
Oct 22
Becky M. Nicolaides, "The New Suburbia: How Diversity Remade Suburban Life in Los Angeles After 1945" (Oxford UP, 2024)
The adoption of the Hart-Celler Act in 1965, triggered a wave of immigration to the U.S. not seen since before the First World War. But these newcomers were now far less likely to have come from Europe than Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America. And they were far more likely to s ... Show More
38m 43s
Sep 30
Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez and Anita Huízar-Hernández eds., "meXicana Roots and Routes: Listening to People, Places, and Pasts" (U Arizona Press, 2025)
Community voices are often an underrepresented aspect of our historical and cultural knowledge of the U.S. Southwest. In this episode, we sit down with Vanessa Fonseca-Chávez and Anita Huízar-Hernández, editors of meXicana Roots and Routes: Listening to People, Places, and Pasts ... Show More
22 m
Sep 2024
Japanese in America: Railroads, Internment Camps & Little Tokyo
<p>When the US turned to Japan looking for workers in the late 19th Century, they probably never foresaw that one day soon they would imprison those who arrived, their successors, and their families, en masse in camps around America.</p><br><p>To hear about the Japanese American ... Show More
50 m
Jan 2024
Jack Glazier, "Anthropology and Radical Humanism: Native and African American Narratives and the Myth of Race" (MSU Press, 2020)
Paul Radin was one of the founding generation of American cultural anthropologists: A student of Franz Boas, and famed ethnographer of the Winnebago. Yet little is known about Radin's life. A leftist who was persecuted by the FBI and who lived for several years outside of the Un ... Show More
1h 4m
Jan 2025
Adrian de Leon, "Bundok: A Hinterland History of Filipino America" (UNC Press, 2023)
In a book that pulls together both sides of the Pacific, Bundok: A Hinterland History of Filipino America (UNC Press, 2023) asks the question: what if we look at Filipino history not from the cities or the imperial metropoles, but from the mountains and the countryside? Or put an ... Show More
1h 12m
Dec 2022
Daniel Immerwahr, "The Galactic Vietnam: Technology, Modernization, and Empire in George Lucas’s Star Wars" (2022)
In this episode I got to chat about two of my favorite things: the history of imperialism and Star Wars with Daniel Immerwahr, Professor of History at Northwestern University. Our conversation focused on his recent article “The Galactic Vietnam: Technology, Modernization, and Emp ... Show More
1h 4m
Dec 2024
Emily Mitchell-Eaton, "New Destinations of Empire: Mobilities, Racial Geographies, and Citizenship in the Transpacific United States" (U Georgia Press, 2024)
In 1986 the Compact of Free Association marked the formal end of U.S. colonialism in the Republic of the Marshall Islands, while simultaneously re-entrenching imperial power dynamics between the two countries. The U.S.-RMI Compact at once enshrined exclusive U.S. military access ... Show More
1h 11m
Sep 11
Chelsi West Ohueri, "Encountering Race in Albania: An Ethnography of the Communist Afterlife" (Cornell UP, 2025)
Encountering Race in Albania: An Ethnography of the Communist Afterlife (Cornell University Press, 2025) is the first book to interrogate race and racial logics in Albania. Chelsi West Ohueri examines how race is made, remade, produced, and reproduced through constructions of whi ... Show More
51m 10s
Jan 2025
Stacey Diane Arañez Litam, "Patterns that Remain: A Guide to Healing for Asian Children of Immigrants" (Oxford UP, 2025)
This empowering book blends history, storytelling, and culturally grounded techniques to equip readers with the tools needed to promote self-reflection, personal growth, and diasporic healing. Asian Americans represent the fastest growing ethnic group in the United States, yet fe ... Show More
26m 54s
Aug 2024
Season 3, Episode 10: Jean Dong, Chinese Statecraft in a Changing World
Please join Professor Jeffrey Sachs and China expert, Jean Dong as they discuss Dong’s fascinating book, Chinese Statecraft in a Changing World: Demystifying Enduring Traditions and Dynamic Constraints. Dr. Dong offers a rich and subtle historical perspective on China’s statecraf ... Show More
40m 34s