Cambridge American History Seminar Podcast

Dr Kaeten Mistry discusses his current research on the history of secrecy and the tensions it raises between civil liberties and national security. This draws from Chapter 2 of his current book project, The Secrecy Regime (working title), which traces U.S. state secrecy from its early twentieth-century origins to the present.

Dr Mistry is a scholar of the United States and the world, specialising in foreign relations, the internatio...

Please note that this episode contains discussion of sexual violence.

This week, PhD candidates Sam Lanevi and Megan Renoir sit down with Dr. Kaisha Esty to discuss her current research project.

Dr. Esty is Assistant Professor of History, African American Studies, and Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. She’s on sabbatical this year as an AAUW postdoctoral fellow and resident fellow at the R...

“We Don’t Call Them Wars Anymore,” explores the history of international intervention after the Second World War, and how the role of the United Nations has shifted over time.

We speak with Dr. Lydia Walker, Assistant Professor and Myers Chair in Global Military History at Ohio State University, and author of the multiple award-winning book ‘States-in-Waiting: A Counter Narrative of Global Decolonisation’ (Cambridge University Press...

Dr. Wendell Nii Laryea Adjetey (Nii Laryea Osabu I, Atrékor Wé Oblahii kè Oblayéé Mantsè) — Associate Professor of History and William Dawson Scholar at McGill University — discusses his book: 'Cross-Border Cosmopolitans: The Making of a Pan-African North America '(The University of North Carolina Press, 2023). His book examines how African-descended peoples engaged in liberation movements based on their shared Black and Af...

In this episode of the Cambridge American History Seminar Podcast, we’re joined by Dr Tara Bynum, Associate Professor of English & African American Studies at the University of Iowa. 

She discusses a paper related to her book project, titled: ‘Obour Tanner Makes an Archive: Or, How to Remember Your Famous (and Deceased) 18th-Century Friend, Phillis Wheatley.’

Dr. Bynum’s research centres on a remarkable set of letters written bet...

In this special episode, we’re joined by the incoming Paul Mellon Professor, Dr. Mia Bay.

Dr. Bay is a leading scholar of American and African American intellectual, cultural, and social history.

She has won multiple book awards. Some of her influential works include ‘The White Image in the Black Mind’ (Oxford University Press, 2000), ‘Travelling Black: A Story of Race and Resistance’ (Harvard University Press, 2021), and key...

Axel Schäfer, Professor in American Studies at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, and of U.S. History at the Obama Institute, joins us in this episode. He discusses the paper he gave in our seminar, titled 'The “Tempest Tost” and the “People of Plenty”: Migration and the Politics of Consumption in the U.S. Since the 1880s.'

Professor Schäfer examines the relationship between immigration, consumer capitalism, and welfare state-b...

In this episode, we’re talking with Molly Warsh, Associate Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh, about her new book project, 'Servants of the Seasons.' Molly is also an editor of the Journal of Early Modern History.

We dive into how her work is reshaping our understanding of iterancy, labour, and seasonality in the early modern world—and what it means to study both people and environments in flux. Molly shares how s...

In this episode, we’re joined by Kimberly Welch, Associate Professor of History and Law at Vanderbilt University. Kim is currently a Fellow-in-Residence at the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford. She spoke with us about the paper she presented in the seminar, titled “Eulalie Mandeville’s Money: A Free Black Woman and Her Legacy in Antebellum New Orleans.” It’s part of her current book project, which follows t...

Today on the podcast, we speak with Elizabeth Ellis, Associate Professor of History at Princeton University, about her recent book titled ‘The Great Power of Small Nations: Indigenous Diplomacy in the Gulf South’ (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022).

Professor Ellis focuses on Indigenous polities in early America, and how decisions made by Native nations with strategically small governance structures had substantive impacts on h...

This week on the podcast, PhD candidates Hugh Wood and Megan Renoir sit down with Sophie FitzMaurice, Research Fellow at the Centre for History and Economics at the University of Cambridge. Sophie discusses her paper, "From Perishable Property to Industrial Preservation: Remaking the Telegraph Pole in the Early 20th-Century U.S."—an exploration of the environmental and material history of a technology that, for the first time, allo...

This week, PhD candidates Fergus and Caroline are joined by Shane Hamilton, Reader in Strategy, Management and Society at the University of York. They discuss his recent paper, “The Persistence of Glyphosate: Monsanto’s Strategic Maintenance of Roundup, the World’s Most Enduring Herbicide Technology.” The conversation explores the history of Monsanto’s production of glyphosate—better known by its commercial name, Roundup—and examin...

This week on the podcast, Dr. Tom Smith,  Affiliated Lecturer and Keasbey Fellow in American Studies at Selwyn College, University of Cambridge, examines how Protestant missionaries situated themselves within local Pacific contexts, and American empire more generally. You can read more of Smith's work in the recent publication of his book, Word across the Water: American Protestant Missionaries, Pacific Worlds, and the Making of Im...

Gary Gerstle, the outgoing Paul Mellon Professor of American History at Cambridge and author of multiple award winning books including American Crucible, Liberty and Coercion, and, most recently, the Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order, joins Fergus and Hugh to discuss his career, major works, the state of the historical profession and the university sphere, and the contemporary political moment.

The last episode of this academi...

Dr. Lila Chambers, research fellow at Gonville and Cauis College, Cambridge, joins Shea Hendry and Hugh Wood to discuss her upcoming book, Liquid Capital: Alcohol and the Rise of Slavery in the British Atlantic, 1580-1737. Lila's research traces the intertwined development of political economy, diplomacy, and race in West Africa, the Caribbean, the British Isles, and North America between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries....

Daniel Widener is a Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of Black Arts West and the book under discussion today: Third Worlds Within: multiethnic movements and transnational solidarity, available through Duke University Press. Taking their cues from the book’s introduction, titled “The Dream of a Common Language: Afterlives of U.S. Thirdworldism,” Fergus Selsdon Games and Kris Dekatris—P...

Erika Lee, this year’s Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions at Cambridge University, Bae Family Professor of History, and Radcliffe Alumnae Professor at Harvard University, joins Fergus Selsdon Games and Sam Lanevi—both PhD candidates here at Cambridge—to discuss her upcoming work Reclaiming Lost Histories of Asian America. Topics include toppling statues, the problems surrounding contemporary memorialisation, and ov...