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 academic year, there will be more to come in October.

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,

Prof. Steven Hahn, Pulitzer Prize winning historian, joins Fergus Seldson Games and Hugh Wood to talk about his new work, Illiberal America: A History. Offered as a corrective to Louis Hartz's classic, The Liberal Tradition in America, Prof. Hahn discusses westward expansion, eugenics, and a deep seated but not intractable illiberal current that has emerged in our own times.

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—PhD candidates here at Cambridge—join Daniel to discuss Thirdworldism, racial capitalism, neoliberalism, settler colonialism, Daniel’s scholarly influences, and solidarity.  

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 overcoming research hurdles. 

Arianne Sedef Urus, Assistant Professor of Early American History and Fellow at Christ's College, Cambridge, joins Megan Renoir and Hugh Wood to discuss cod fisheries, early modern empires, and Indigenous expropriation through the commons.

Prof. Manfred Berg, Curt Engelhorn Chair in American History at the University of Heidelberg, joins Megan Renoir and Hugh Wood to discuss the 2nd Amendment, mass shootings, the militia movement, and the possibility of another American civil war.

Dr. Erik Mathisen joins Hugh Wood and Rob O'Sullivan to discuss his paper "The Problem of Free Labor and the Origins of the Republican Party." Dr. Mathisen places the idea of Free Labor within a global context and attempts to understand how the flaws of Free Labor were glossed over by proponents and later historians.

This week, Elizabeth Varon, Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Professor of American History, University of Oxford, and Langbourne M. Williams Professor of American History, University of Virginia, examines the political discourse of the Reconstruction era, and particularly the origins of the phrase "white supremacy."

NB this episode contains reference to outdated and offensive language.

Dr. Noam Maggor, Senior Lecturer in American History at Queen Mary, joins the podcast to discuss the transformation of American capitalism in the late-C19th. We focus on railroad regulation as a tool of the American 'developmental state'.