Jun 11
Sarah McNamara, "Ybor City: Crucible of the Latina South" (UNC Press, 2023)
Decades before Miami became Havana USA, a wave of leftist, radical, working-class women and men from prerevolutionary Cuba crossed the Florida Straits, made Ybor City the global capital of the Cuban cigar industry, and established the foundation of latinidad in the Sunshine State ... Show More
1h 19m
Jun 10
Michael Staudenmaier, "White, Black, Brown: Becoming Puerto Rican in Chicago" (UNC Press, 2026)
Independent historian Michael Staudenmaier joins Michael Stauch to discuss his new book about “becoming Puerto Rican” in Chicago. Staudenmaier’s book, White, Black, Brown: Becoming Puerto Rican in Chicago (University of North Carolina Press, 2026), describes how generations of ... Show More
59m 29s
May 12
Rachel Grace Newman, "The Future in Their Hands: Making Mexico's Foreign-Educated Elite" (U California Press, 2026)
The Future in Their Hands: Making Mexico's Foreign-Educated Elite (U California Press, 2026), by Dr. Rachel Grace Newman is a deep history of the politics of foreign education in Mexico, where many influential figures have degrees from European or US institutions. Reconstructing ... Show More
3m 45s
Oct 2023
Chrissy Yee Lau, "New Women of Empire: Gendered Politics and Racial Uplift in Interwar Japanese America" (U Washington Press, 2022)
This episode, which is co-hosted with Mika Thornburg, features a conversation with Dr. Chrissy Yee Lau, the author of the newly published New Women of Empire: Gendered Politics and Racial Uplift in Interwar Japanese America (U Washington Press, 2022). The book centers the compell ... Show More
56m 21s
Aug 2019
Jennifer C. Lena, "Entitled: Discriminating Tastes and the Expansion of the Arts" ( Princeton UP, 2019)
How did American elites change the meaning of Art? In Entitled: Discriminating Tastes and the Expansion of the Arts (Princeton University Press, 2019), Jennifer C. Lena, associate professor of arts administration at Colombia University, charts the history of American arts and cul ... Show More
36m 12s
Jun 2025
Yasmine Motawy, "Children’s Picture Books and Contemporary Egyptian Society" (AUC Press, 2025)
Children’s picture books are some of the most transparently ideological materials available to parents and educators, and as cultural objects they are an expression of the zeitgeist of a particular era. They reveal much about the hopes, values, and aspirations of the society that ... Show More
47m 34s
Apr 2024
Material Concerns: Disney Bonus Pt. I
<p>Like the serious academics they are, Hannah and Marcelle not only researched Disney in academic journals, they also went to the happiest place on earth! They made custom Theodor Adorno t-shirts, scooped Marcelle's eight-year-old and Gender Playground co-host, Raimi Marx, and w ... Show More
27m 53s
Dec 2021
Alisa Freedman, "Japan on American TV: Screaming Samurai Join Anime Clubs in the Land of the Lost" (Association for Asian Studies, 2021)
Alisa Freedman's book Japan on American TV: Screaming Samurai Join Anime Clubs in the Land of the Lost (Association for Asian Studies, 2021) explores political, economic, and cultural issues underlying depictions of Japan on U.S. television comedies and the programs they inspired ... Show More
56m 54s
Aug 2024
Yiman Wang, "To Be an Actress: Labor and Performance in Anna May Wong's Cross-Media World" (U California Press, 2024)
Between 1919 and 1961, pioneering Chinese American actress Anna May Wong established an enduring legacy that encompassed cinema, theatre, radio, and American television. Born in Los Angeles, yet with her US citizenship scrutinised due to the Chinese Exclusion Act, Wong—a defiant ... Show More
58m 16s
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
Reverberations of Culture: Racialized Performance in Early Twentieth-Century Musical Variety by Just a Buncha Clowns (Routledge, 2026) by Dr. Shane Breaux examines musical variety clowns and the broad array of racial and ethnic impersonations they performed on four distinct touring circuits and apparatuses: the African American Theatre Owners Booking Associa ... Show More
