New Books in American Studies

A moving exploration of the life and work of the celebrated American writer, blending biography and memoir with literary criticism.Since James Baldwin's death in 1987, his writing - including The Fire Next Time, one of the manifestos of the Civil Rights Movement, and Giovanni's Room, a pioneering work of gay fiction - has only grown in relevance.Douglas Field was introduced to Baldwin's essays and novels by his father, who witnessed the writer's debate with William F. Buckley at Cambridge University in 1965. In Walking in the Dark: James Baldwin, My Father and I (Manchester UP, 2024), he embarks on a journey to unravel his life-long fascination and to understand why Baldwin continues to enthral us decades after his death.Tracing Baldwin's footsteps in France, the US and Switzerland, and digging into archives, Field paints an intimate portrait of the writer's life and influence. At the same time, he offers a poignant account of coming to terms with his father's Alzheimer's disease. Interweaving Baldwin's writings on family, illness, memory and place, Walking in the dark is an eloquent testament to the enduring power of great literature to illuminate our paths.Douglas Field is a writer and academic who teaches American literature at the University of Manchester. He has published two books on James Baldwin, the most recent of which is All Those Strangers: The Art and Lives of James Baldwin (2015). His work has been published in Beat Scene, the Big Issue, the Guardian and the Times Literary Supplement, where he has been a regular contributor for twenty years. He is a founding editor of James Baldwin Review.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

In Well Worth Saving (Yale University Press, 2019), Professor Laurel Leff explores how American universities responded to the sudden and urgent appeals for help from scholars trapped in Nazi-dominated Europe. Although many scholars were welcomed into faculty or research positions in the US, thousands more tried to find a way over and failed. Those who were unable to flee were left to face the horrors of the Holocaust. In this rigorously researched book, Laurel Leff rescues from obscurity scholars who were deemed "not worth saving" and tells the riveting, full story of the hiring decisions universities made during the Nazi era.Laurel Leff is Professor of Journalism and Associate Director of Jewish Studies at Northeastern University.This interview was conducted by Renee Hale, who holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering and works in R&D for the food and beverage industry. She is the author of The Nightstorm Files, a voracious reader, and enjoys sharing the joy of discovering new perspectives with listeners. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Every year between 1998 to 2020 except one, Louisiana had the highest per capita rate of incarceration in the nation and thus the world. Prison Capital: Mass Incarceration and Struggles for Abolition Democracy in Louisiana (University of North Carolina Press, 2023) is the first detailed account of Louisiana's unprecedented turn to mass incarceration from 1970 to 2020.Through extensive research, Dr. Lydia Pelot-Hobbs illuminates how policy makers enlarged Louisiana's carceral infrastructures with new prisons and jail expansions alongside the bulking up of police and prosecutorial power. At the same time, these infrastructures were the products of multiscalar crises: the swings of global oil capitalism, liberal federal court and policy interventions, the rise of neoliberal governance and law-and-order austerity, and racist and patriarchal moral panics surrounding "crime." However, these crises have also created fertile space for anticarceral social movements. From incarcerated people filing conditions of confinement lawsuits and Angola activists challenging life without parole to grassroots organizers struggling to shrink the New Orleans jail following Hurricane Katrina and LGBTQ youth of color organizing against police sexual violence, grassroots movements stretch us toward new geographies of freedom in the lineage of abolition democracy.Understanding Louisiana's carceral crisis extends our understanding of the interplay between the crises of mass criminalization and racial capitalism while highlighting the conditions of possibility for dismantling carceral power in all its forms.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

On January 20th, Donald Trump issued an executive order entitled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” The order announced that “It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality. Under my direction, the Executive Branch will enforce all sex-protective laws to promote this reality...”The enforcement of this executive order has rippled through the United States – and has included removing words and images from websites and papering over interpretive panels in museums. For example, material related to the Enola Gay -- a WWII Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber, named after Enola Gay Tibbets, the mother of the pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets – was removed because it contained the word “gay.” As a new joint statement from the American Historical Association and Organization of American Historians recounts, “Some alterations, such as those related to topics like the Tuskegee Airmen and the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, have been hurriedly reversed in response to public outcry. Others remain. The scrubbing of words and acronyms from the Stonewall National Monument webpage, for instance, distorts the site’s history by denying the roles of transgender and queer people in movements for rights and liberation. This distortion of history renders the past unrecognizable to the people who lived it and useless to those who seek to learn from the past.”To discuss how – and why – the Trump administration is censoring and removing historical materials, my guest is Dr. Wendy L. Rouse, Professor of History at San Jose State University where she is the program coordinator for the History/Social Science Teacher Preparation Program. Her research focuses on the history of gender and sexuality in the Progressive Era – and her publication for the National Park Service was changed after the executive order. She is the author of books and articles, including Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement published by NYU Press in 2022. Susan’s NBN conversation with Wendy about the book is here.Mentioned in the Podcast: Organization of American Historians (OAH)’s Records at Risk Data Collection Initiative for individuals to report removed or changed material Reports by AP about scrubbing military websites and NPR on removal of photographs and mentions of trans and queer on National Park Service websites LBGTQ Historian statements and articles including letter signed by 360 historians Wendy’s blogposts on OutHistory and the NYU Press blog 5calls ap for connecting with senators and representatives GLBT Historical Association Multiple LGBTQ organizations, represented by Lambda Legal, have filed a lawsuit challenging the Trump Administration's executive orders attempting to erase transgender people and deny them access to services Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Birthright citizenship is established in the first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution – yet Donald Trump’s recent Executive Order 14160 denies some types of birthright citizenship. The Order contradicts over a century of American law, legal practice, and constitutional interpretation. Three groups have opposed the order as unconstitutional and challenged it in the courts: and cities, civil rights organizations, and labor organizations. In the podcast, three scholars to help Susan and Lilly interrogate the meaning of natural born citizenship, the political ramifications of Trump’s order, and the complicated history of natural born citizenship in the United States.Dr. Anna O. Law is the Herbert Kurz Chair in Constitutional Rights and Associate Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College, City University of New York.Julie Novkov is Dean of Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy and Professor of Political Science and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, University at Albany, SUNY.Carol Nackenoff is the Emerita Richter Professor of Political Science, Swarthmore CollegeMentioned: Calvin’s Case (1608) Donald Trump’s Executive order 14160 Julie and Carol’s 2021 book American by Birth: Wong Kim Ark and the Battle for Citizenship and their NBN interview with Susan. Anna’s 2025 FREE open-access article “The Civil War and Reconstruction Amendments’ Effects on Citizenship and Migration” Anna’s NBN conversation with Heath Brown on her 2017 book, The Immigration Battle in American Courts Lilly’s conversation with Martha Jones about her book, Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America Kate Masur, Until Justice Be Done: America’s First Civil Rights Movement, from Revolution to Reconstruction (2021) Lilly’s NBN conversation with Elizabeth Cohen and Cyril Ghosh about their 2019 book Citizenship Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Uncovers a powerful relationship between pathology and money: beginning in the nineteenth century, the severity of mental illness was measured against a patient’s economic productivity.Madness and Enterprise: Psychiatry, Economic Reason, and the Emergence of Pathological Value (U Chicago Press, 2024) reveals the economic norms embedded within psychiatric thinking about mental illness in the North Atlantic world. Over the course of the nineteenth century, various forms of madness were subjected to a style of psychiatric reasoning that was preoccupied with money. Psychiatrists across Western Europe and the United States attributed financial and even moral value to an array of pathological conditions, such that some mental disorders were seen as financial assets and others as economic liabilities. By turning to economic conduct and asking whether potential patients appeared capable of managing their financial affairs or even generating wealth, psychiatrists could often bypass diagnostic uncertainties about a person’s mental state.Through an exploration of the intertwined histories of psychiatry and economic thought, Nima Bassiri shows how this relationship transformed the very idea of value in the modern North Atlantic, as the most common forms of social valuation—moral value, medical value, and economic value—were rendered equivalent and interchangeable. If what was good and what was healthy were increasingly conflated with what was remunerative (and vice versa), then a conceptual space opened through which madness itself could be converted into an economic form and subsequently redeemed—and even revered.Nima Bassiri is assistant professor of literature at Duke University, where he is also the codirector of the Institute for Critical Theory.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

In the first part of our two-part conversation on Madison’s Notes, we speak with Frances Lee, Professor of Politics and Public Affairs at Princeton University, about her co-authored book In COVID’s Wake (Princeton UP, 2025). The book offers a comprehensive and candid political assessment of how institutions performed during the pandemic. It explores how governments, influenced by Wuhan’s lockdown, deviated from existing pandemic plans, leading to policies that often favored the “laptop class” while leaving essential workers vulnerable. Extended school closures disproportionately affected less-privileged families, and the politicization of science marginalized dissent. Lee and her co-author, Stephen Macedo, argue that future crises must uphold the values of liberal democracy: tolerance, respect for evidence, and a commitment to truth.This discussion dives into key questions raised in the book, including the importance of conducting a post-mortem of the pandemic response. Lee highlighted how polarization in the two-party system complicates evaluations of what worked and what didn’t. We also explored the role of states as “laboratories” for different responses and whether meaningful comparisons can be drawn between them. Lee reflected on why pre-existing pandemic plans were abandoned and how the pandemic strained the public’s trust in media, policy advisors, and academic institutions. The ambiguity of desired policy outcomes, she noted, often hindered rational cost-benefit analysis, further complicating the response.Lee emphasized the value of embracing complexity and ambiguity in conversations about societal and political issues. By examining the pandemic’s lessons, “In COVID’s Wake” challenges readers to consider how we can better prepare for future crises while staying true to democratic principles.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

Iconic as a novelist and popular cultural figure, Zora Neale Hurston remains underappreciated as an anthropologist. Is it inevitable that Hurston's literary authority should eclipse her anthropological authority? If not, what socio-cultural and institutional values and processes shape the different ways we read her work? Jennifer L. Freeman Marshall considers the polar receptions to Hurston's two areas of achievement by examining the critical response to her work across both fields. Drawing on a wide range of readings, Freeman Marshall explores Hurston's popular appeal as iconography, her elevation into the literary canon, her concurrent marginalization in anthropology despite her significant contributions, and her place within constructions of Black feminist literary traditions. Perceptive and original, Ain't I an Anthropologist (University of Illinois Press, 2023) is an overdue reassessment of Zora Neale Hurston's place in American cultural and intellectual life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Today I’m speaking with Chryl Laird, Associate Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland College Park. We are discussing her co-authored book with Ismail White, Steadfast Democrats: How Social Forces Shape Black Political Behavior. Published in 2020, this book remains highly relevant for understanding American political behavior. While Trump did make significant gains among black voters in 2024, particularly male voters, African American voters still overwhelmingly support the Democratic Party. Chryl has appeared on the NBN in the past, so while we will discuss the book, we will also discuss it in the context of today.Chryl Laird is Associate Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland College Park.Caleb Zakarin is editor of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

The Dreadful Word: Speech Crime and Polite Gentlemen in Massachusetts, 1690–1776 (Cambridge University Press, 2022) by Dr. Kristin Olbertson is the first comprehensive study of criminal speech in eighteenth-century New England, traces how the criminalization, prosecution, and punishment of speech offenses in Massachusetts helped to establish and legitimate a social and cultural regime of politeness.Analyzing provincial statutes and hundreds of criminal prosecutions, Dr. Olbertson argues that colonists transformed their understanding of speech offenses, from fundamentally ungodly to primarily impolite. As white male gentility emerged as the pre-eminent model of authority, records of criminal prosecution and punishment show a distinct cadre of politely pious men defining themselves largely in contrast to the vulgar, the impious, and the unmanly. “Law,” as manifested in statutes as well as in local courts and communities, promoted and legitimized a particular, polite vision of the king's peace and helped effectuate the British Empire. In this unique and fascinating work, Dr. Olbertson reveals how ordinary people interacted with and shaped legal institutions.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