The Journal of American History

This special panel debrief edition of the Journal of American History Podcast features a conversation on “Citizenship and Belonging,” held at the 2025 OAH Conference on American History in Chicago.In this episode, panelists Erica Lally (Georgetown University), David Dry (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Heidi Ardizzone (Saint Louis University), and Hannah Simmons (Northwestern University) explore definitions of citizenship and belonging in U.S. history. Hosted by Kasha Appleton and Marina Mecham, this debrief examines how Black and Indigenous women's citizenship claims in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries reshape our understanding of American citizenship and rights. The discussion highlights different approaches to studying citizenship and belonging, while showcasing how each panelist's research contributes to this evolving field.Music: King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band’s Mabel’s Dream, 1923X: @thejamhist | Facebook: The Journal of American History#JAHCast

This special panel debrief edition of the Journal of American History Podcast features a conversation on “Unsettling Forest Histories,” held at the 2025 OAH Conference on American History in Chicago.In this episode, Andrew Needham (New York University), Bathsehba Demuth (Brown University), Allyson LaForge (Brown University), and Mariko Whitenack (New York University) reflect on their panel session which discussed the state of forest history and the role of Indigenous ontology in the field. In this debrief dialogue, hosted by Marina Mecham and Kasha Appleton, the panelists respond to questions such as: why is it important to study forest history? What does it mean to “unsettle” forest histories and environmental histories more broadly? How are historians doing this unsettling work now? What can Indigenous ontologies contribute to the field?Music: King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band’s Mabel’s Dream, 1923X: @thejamhist | Facebook: The Journal of American History#JAHCast

This special panel debrief edition of the Journal of American History Podcast features a conversation on “Queer and Trans Histories of the Midwest,” held at the 2025 OAH Conference on American History in Chicago.In this episode, Marc Ridgell (University of Pennsylvania), Clare Forstie (Saint Paul College), Steven Louis Brawley (LGBTQ History Project in St. Louis), René Esparza (Washington University in St. Louis), and Nic Flores (University of Illinois Urbana Champagne) unpack their panel session which broadly discussed the importance of focusing on the Midwest when studying, archiving, and writing queer history. In this debrief discussion, hosted by Marina Mecham and Kasha Appleton, the panelists respond to questions such as: what can we learn about resistance and everyday resistance strategies from queer history? Why are queer archives important and what sources can people turn to to write queer histories? How does the history of the AIDS crisis shift when centering/focusing on the Midwest? Who is this historical work for and why is it important? This panel was solicited by the OAH Committee on the Status of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) Historians and Histories and endorsed by MHA and the WHA. Music: King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band’s Mabel’s Dream, 1923X: @thejamhist | Facebook: The Journal of American History#JAHCast

How do books get reviewed in the Journal of American History? What criteria do editors use when selecting books for review? How are reviewers assigned, and how can you become one yourself? What constitutes a good book review according to our editors?In this episode of the Journal of American History Podcast, Marina Mecham speaks with Assistant Editor Amy Ransford and Editorial Assistant Kasha Appleton to provide an inside look at the journal's book review process. If you've ever considered submitting a book for review or writing a review for the Journal but aren't sure about the next steps, this episode is for you!Still have questions after listening to our Inside the JAH series? Email us at jahcast@oah.org. We plan to create another episode dedicated to answering your additional questions. If you're interested in becoming a reviewer for the journal, please submit a reviewer data sheet linked here: https://www.oah.org/publications/jah/reviewer-data-sheet/ Music: King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band’s Mabel’s Dream, 1923X: @thejamhist | Facebook: The Journal of American History#JAHCast

]Editor's note: The person Jessica refers to as "H.M." in the episode is "M.W." in the article. Read the article here: https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jaae267Music: King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band's Mabel's Dream, 1923Facebook: The Journal of American History#JAHCast

In this episode of the Journal of American History Podcast, Andrew Cooper speaks with Natasha Zaretsky about her article, "The War on Fatigue: Women, Work, and Energy in the 1980s," which appeared in the December 2024 issue of the Journal of American History.  Natasha shows how, during the 1980s, the United States transitioned to a dual-earner economy in which most mothers of young children worked for wages outside the home. Faced with the challenge of balancing wage labor and family responsibilities, working mothers were told that they needed to conserve, manage, and invest their physical and psychic energies wisely. Throughout the decade, employers, advertisers, physicians, psychologists, and fitness and diet gurus waged war on women’s fatigue. Natasha examines this campaign and explains how it updated American ideals of self-improvement and repurposed them to portray individual energy management as the solution to the challenges posed by working motherhood in 1980s America. In this episode, Andrew and Natasha discuss energy, gender, race, and the broader social implications of energy and feminism in the 1980s United States. Read the article here: https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jaae183Music: King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band's Mabel's Dream, 1923X: @thejamhist Facebook: The Journal of American History#JAHCast

In this episode of the Journal of American History Podcast Andrew Cooper speaks with Tracey Deutsch about her article, "The Vigorous Approach to Cooking: Julia Child, Domesticity, and Gendered Labor at Midcentury," which appeared in the December 2024 issue of the Journal of American History.  Tracey shows how Julia Child reframed laborious, elaborate cooking as a middle- and even upper-class activity. Rather than inward-focused family dinners overseen by thoughtful wives and mothers, these meals were outward facing—ways to welcome other couples, and new ideas, into one’s home. For Child and growing numbers of home chefs, cooking came to be understood as so important that it lay outside women’s realm, and hence outside the realm of work at all. Andrew and Tracey discuss archives, Julia Child, race, and the broader social implications of changing perceptions of food and cooking. Read the article here: https://doi.org/10.1093jahist/jaae182Music: King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band's Mabel's Dream, 1923X: @thejamhist Facebook: The Journal of American History#JAHCast

How do you submit an article? What does peer review look like? Why might the JAH accept or reject a piece? What happens after your article has been submitted? In this episode of the Journal of American History Podcast Marina Mecham speaks with Executive Editor Stephen Andrews and Production Editor Andrew Cooper to take you behind the scenes of the submission process at the journal. They walk through the entire process from submission to publication. Marina also asks Steve and Andrew questions about article publication sent to us from graduate students. Whether you're considering submitting an article to the JAH or just curious about the publication process, then this episode is for you! Music: King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band's Mabel's Dream, 1923X: @thejamhist Facebook: The Journal of American History#JAHCast

In this episode of the Journal of American History Podcast Andrew Cooper speaks with Lara Vapnek about her article, "The Labor of Infant Feeding: Wet-Nursing at the Nursery and Child's Hospital, 1854–1910," which appeared in the June 2022 issue of the Journal of American History. Lara explains how the labor of infant feeding shaped the meaning of motherhood by examining the practice of wet-nursing at the Nursery and Child’s Hospital (1854–1910) in New York City. Elite women who volunteered as hospital managers positioned themselves as moral mothers, detached from the bodily labor of breast feeding and responsible for the welfare of poor white mothers and children. The impoverished immigrant women served by the institution had little choice but to work as wet nurses. Institutional records reveal the dependence of elite women on wet nurses, the precarity of poor women’s motherhood, and the vulnerability of their infants. Andrew and Lara discuss wet nursing as an issue of labor, race, and class in the northeastern United States, and the affective implications of violent work. Read the article here: https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jaac119Music: King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band's Mabel's Dream, 1923X: @thejamhist Facebook: The Journal of American History#JAHCast

Over the past two decades, scholars have begun to document the centrality of sexual assault in the U.S. political landscape. There has been significant research on how sexual assault (and anti-rape activism) shaped the long civil rights movement, military occupations, and the dynamics of modern feminism. However, scholars are only recently considering how the politics surrounding sexual assault have defined major state institutions, i.e., the military and the prison system. Likewise, stories of anti-rape activism and community organizing are often overshadowed by narratives that emphasize courtroom dramas and legal proceedings. In this episode, , Ruth Lawlor, R.M. Douglas, Catherine Jacquet, and Jana Lipman demonstrate the necessity of incorporating sexual assault, and activists’ resistance to it, in our understanding of 20th century institutions.Read more about the session here: https://www.oah.org/conferences/oah24/sessions__trashed/session/?id=5218Music: King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band's Mabel's Dream, 1923X: @theJAMhistory Facebook: The Journal of American History

This special panel debrief edition of the Journal of American History Podcast features a conversation on "Neither the One nor the Other: The Native South in a Black and White World after 1900," held at the 2024 OAH Conference on American History. In this episode, Angela P. Hudson, Denise E. Bates, Dixie Ray Haggard, Robert Caldwell, and Daniel Usner unpack their panel session, which examined how, after 1900, numerous state- or federally-acknowledged, unrecognized, or transplanted Native American groups remained the South despite the efforts of the federal and state governments to remove them in the past. Most non-Natives chose to disregard these indigenous people. Non-Natives justified their position by claiming “true” southern Natives were extinct or removed. Panelists explore the the persistence of Native communities in the South and their resistance to the marginalization and injustice imposed on them by Jim Crow segregation in this conversation.This panel was endorsed by the OAH Committee on the Status of ALANA Historians, ALANA Histories, and the Agricultural History Society.Read more about the session here: https://www.oah.org/conferences/oah24/sessions__trashed/session/?id=5273Music: King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band's Mabel's Dream, 1923X: @theJAMhistory Facebook: The Journal of American History

This special panel debrief edition of the Journal of American History Podcast features a conversation on "Getting the Story Straight: Queering Regional Identities," held at the 2024 OAH Conference on American History. In this episode, La Shonda Mims and Wesley Phelps have a conversation with Marina about the importance of regionality in histories of queerness and HIV/AIDS, and how the dearth of attention to areas of the United States beyond east coast cities incorrectly homogenizes and erases queer experiences. This conversation came from Mims's and Phelps's panel session, which locates queerness in regions typically depicted as bastions of straightness. Together, they argue that queerness not only occurs everywhere, but has lasting implications that emanate outward to the national scale. Phelps’s paper interrogates the depiction of AIDS activist Ron Woodroof in the film Dallas Buyers Club and argues that the movie’s historical inaccuracies reveal an attempt to straight-wash what should be a queer narrative of regional identity. Katie Batza was unable to join the conversation, but their work is still present in this conversation. Batza’s paper queers the heartland region by examining the radical potential of religious institutions, which are often associated with the region’s straightness and political conservatism.Read more about the session here: https://www.oah.org/conferences/oah24/sessions/session/?id=5395Music: King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band's Mabel's Dream, 1923X: @theJAMhistory Facebook: The Journal of American History

This special panel debrief edition of the Journal of American History Podcast features a conversation on "Missing Histories of Sexual Assault," held at the 2024 OAH Conference on American History. In this episode, Katherine Ott, Rebecca Campbell, Lourdes Inoa Monegro, and Royleen J. Ross continue their important conversation about the lack of study, care, and affect surrounding sexual assault in history. Historical silences around sexual assault are ongoing and appalling. Although the cultural contexts, politics, and consequences of sexual assault are relevant to every field and time period, historians seldom include it as an analytical factor. This roundtable addresses critical issues that are missing from historical analysis, outdated interpretations, and the significance of race, gender, and disability and other starting points for writing sexual assault into history.Between episode and production, Royleen J. Ross started a new position. She is enrolled at the Pueblo of Laguna, and currently serves as the American Psychological Association (APA) Division 45 president. She is a member of the Division 35/45 Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives Task Force. From a cultural psychology lens, Dr. Ross provides training through Pretty Fire Consulting LLC.Read more about the session here: https://www.oah.org/conferences/oah24/sessions/session/?id=5506Music: King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band's Mabel's Dream, 1923X: @theJAMhistory Facebook: The Journal of American History

This special panel debrief edition of the Journal of American History Podcast features a conversation on "Sovereignties in the Atlantic World: Black and Indigenous Intersections," held at the 2024 OAH Conference on American History. Historians of Indigenous peoples and historians of the African diaspora do not engage with each other often enough. Both sets of specialists generally presume that their fields operate by distinctive, and possibly incommensurate, analytics. Historians of Native America stress the importance of sovereignty, which underscores the nationhood of Indigenous peoples. The obvious counterpoint to sovereignty is subjection: conquest and the ways that sovereignty persists within colonization. By contrast, historians of the African diaspora have stressed a different dyad of slavery and freedom. Rooted in the transatlantic slave trade, the plantation complex, and the racialization of labor relations, these scholars center the violence of racial bondage and probe the ways that enslaved people sought liberation in ways small and large. In this episode, Miguel A. Valerio, Matthew Kruer, Hayley Negrín, Shavagne Scott, and Alycia Hall challenge the assumption that these frameworks are incommensurate and argue that both fields have much to gain through conversation. They proceed from the basic question: what happens when we think of slavery and sovereignty as two sides of the same conceptual coin?Read more about the session here: https://oah.org/conferences/oah24/sessions/session/?id=5525Music: King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band's Mabel's Dream, 1923X: @theJAMhistory Facebook: The Journal of American History

This special panel debrief edition of the Journal of American History Podcast features a conversation on "Queering Work: LGBT Labor Histories," held at the 2024 OAH Conference on American History. In this episode, Lane Windham, Alex Melody Burnett, Ryan Patrick Murphy, and Shay Olmstead continue their important conversation about queer and trans workers, "hauntings" in queer history, and "queerbossing." LGBT historians have long focused on leisure and nightlife, but the workplace is also fundamental for understanding the queer past. Fear of job loss was one of the most salient aspects of living a queer life for much of the 20th century, and utterly shaped how LGBT people moved through the world. In some occupational settings, jobs could also affirm gender nonconformity and were also a key place where gay or trans people found each other. This panel was solicited by LAWCHA.Read more about the session here: https://oah.org/conferences/oah24/sessions/session/?id=5525Music: King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band's Mabel's Dream, 1923X: @theJAMhistory Facebook: The Journal of American History

This special panel debrief edition of the Journal of American History Podcast features a conversation on "Nursing for the Common Good: Health Activism, Social Justice, and the History of Nursing Work," held at the 2024 OAH Conference on American History. In this panel, Kara Dixon Vuic, Cory Gatrall, Karissa Haugeberg, and Charissa Threat continue their important contribution to the conference. They consider nursing as political history, and how studying nursing leads to significant historiographical interventions in labor, political, and medical history. Their panel investigates how nurses have confronted issues as diverse as health, poverty, racism, gender, and the environment. The panel also examines how the nursing profession has responded to and reflected on these issues and how historians have understood the relationship between nursing, health crises, and community activism. This panel was endorsed by LAWCHA.Read more about the session here: https://www.oah.org/conferences/oah24/sessions/session/?id=5379Music: King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band's Mabel's Dream, 1923X: @theJAMhistory Facebook: The Journal of American History

This special panel debrief edition of the Journal of American History Podcast features a conversation on "New Carceral Histories: Legacies of Punishment before the Era of Mass Incarceration," held at the 2024 OAH Conference on American History. In this panel, Maile Arvin, Abigail Kahn, Halee Robinson, Derek Taira, and Walter Stern continue their important conversation about ethics and violence in historical research, generated from the papers they presented on this panel. These works critically consider both how we conceive of the carceral state and the purposes of punishment in the era prior to mass incarceration—to extract labor, to assimilate, to destroy kinship ties, and to construct the boundaries of who belongs in the United States empire. Besides providing a temporally distinct perspective, these works unite historiographical traditions that are often siloed—histories of incarceration, colonialism, and education—and, in doing so, highlight the interdependence of the penal system, American empire, and formal schooling in defining and enforcing the boundaries of belonging in American society. By being in service to disenfranchised voices in history, and highlighting the interconnectedness of incarceration, education, and colonialism, this panel seeks to inform and recast current debates on incarceration and abolitionism.This panel was endorsed by the OAH Committee on the Status of ALANA Historians and ALANA Histories, OAH–JAAS Collaborative Committee, WHA, and SHGAPE.Read more about the session here: https://www.oah.org/conferences/oah24/sessions/session/?id=5220Music: King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band's Mabel's Dream, 1923X: @theJAMhistory Facebook: The Journal of American History

This Blogcast Episode features Carleigh Beriont's article, "On the Map," first published in Process: A Blog for American History on December 12, 2023.In this episode, Beriont recovers the hidden history of the Marshall Islands, and how this area "has been central to U.S. security and military interests since the Second World War." She explains how the United States nuclear testing and resulting destruction of Bikini Atoll, its people, and the surrounding area has had lasting political and environmental impacts. Read the Blog here: https://www.processhistory.org/on-the-map-beriont/Music: King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band's Mabel's Dream, 1923X: @thejamhist Facebook: The Journal of American History

In this episode of the Journal of American History Podcast Stephen Andrews speaks with Britain Hopkins about her article, "The Origins of the Student Loan Industry in the United States: Richard Cornuelle, United Student Aid Funds, and the Creation of the Guaranteed Student Loan Program," which appeared in the March 2024 issue of the Journal of American History. Through a consideration of key legislation and actors, Britain contributes to understandings of the origins of the student loan industry and student loan indebtedness in the United States. The article highlights how private organizations and actors—such as the American Bankers Association and the Volker Fund—worked with the Johnson and Nixon administrations to establish student loans as a primary means of funding higher education. These private-federal partnerships increasingly sought to commodify student loans on financial markets, thereby tethering access to higher education to previously excluded groups to market incorporation. The article thereby identifies the origins of student loan indebtedness as a legacy of the Johnson administration’s Great Society agenda. Stephen and Britain discuss neoliberalism, debt, and behind the scenes creation of this article. They also the historicize student debt and the complex, multifaceted issues that historically constructed the current student debt crisis. Read the article here: https://doi.org/10.1093/jahist/jaad351Music: King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band's Mabel's Dream, 1923X: @thejamhist Facebook: The Journal of American History#JAHCast

This Blogcast Episode features Stephen E. Mawdsley's article, "Hesitancy against Hope: Reactions to the First Polio Vaccine," first published in Process: A Blog for American History on January 9, 2024.In this episode, Mawdsley uses the development of the Polio Vaccine to explicate the history public health campaigns and vaccine hesitance in the United States. He shows that "hesitancy and opposition can be effectively challenged through education and outreach initiatives that reach wider demographics to help reduce the incidence of disease."Read the Blog here: https://www.processhistory.org/mawdsley-hesitancy-against-hope-reactions-to-the-first-polio-vaccine/Music: King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band's Mabel's Dream, 1923X: @thejamhist Facebook: The Journal of American History