Penn Press Podcasts

David R. Swartz, Asbury University historian and author of Moral Minority: The Evangelical Left in an Age of Conservatism, discusses the overlooked history of the America's evangelical progressives in the twentieth century. Swartz talks about the differences between Christian fundamentalists and other evangelicals, and the influence of leaders such as Ron Sider, Mark Hatfield, and Jim Wallis.

Robert Dale Parker is James M. Benson Professor in English and Professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Illinois. Parker's collection of poetry, Changing Is Not Vanishing, reinvents the early history of American Indian literature and the history of American poetry by presenting a vast but forgotten archive of American Indian poems. In this podcast, Parker discusses the editing process and reads selected poems from his new book.

Albert J. Churella, Associate Professor in the Social and International Studies Department at Southern Polytechnic State University and author of The Pennsylvania Railroad, Volume 1: Building an Empire, 1846-1917, talks about his monumental history of the transportation giant. At the end of the nineteenth century, the Pennsylvania Railroad was the largest privately owned business corporation in the world. Churella discusses the birth of this enterprise and its relationship to America's natural, technological, and political landscape.

John P. Spencer, Associate Professor of Education at Ursinus College and author of In the Crossfire: Marcus Foster and the Troubled History of American School Reform, talks about the work of a leading public educator who was assassinated in 1973. Spencer shares Foster's success stories and struggles in the Philadelphia and Oakland school systems, and explains what Foster's comprehensive, bridge-building approach can teach us in an age of finger-pointing debates about failing urban schools.

Victoria W. Wolcott, Associate Professor of History at the University at Buffalo, SUNY and author of Race, Riots, and Roller Coasters: The Struggle over Segregated Recreation in America, discusses an overlooked aspect of twentieth-century public accommodations controversies. Wolcott tells how African Americans and their allies fought to integrate parks and playlands across the United States, often in the face of violence and intimidation.

Ruth Mazo Karras, Professor of History and Director of the Center for Medieval Studies at the University of Minnesota, reminds us that traditional marriage was not the only option for couples in medieval Europe. Her new book Unmarriages: Women, Men, and Sexual Unions in the Middle Ages examines the various relationships that took shape during that period.

Lehigh University political scientist Saladin M. Ambar, author of How Governors Built the Modern American Presidency, discusses the role that governorship played in shaping America's executive branch. Ambar talks about the influence of governors and presidents such as Franklin D. Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Bob La Follette, and Rutherford Hayes. He also discusses the implications of this leadership legacy for the 2012 presidential election.

Penn Press's own Sara Davis reads selections from The Satires of Horace, translated by A.M. Juster. In the Satires, the Roman philosopher and dramatic critic Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65-3 B.C.), known as Horace, provides trenchant social commentary on men's perennial enslavement to money, power, fame, and sex. Juster's striking new translation relies on the tools and spirit of the English light verse tradition while taking care to render the original text as accurately as possible.

Historian John Cheng discusses the early culture of popular science fiction. Cheng's new book, Astounding Wonder: Imagining Science and Science Fiction in Interwar America, examines the origins of the genre and its community of fans. Cheng shows how pulp science fiction magazines of the 1920s and 30s reflected mainstream views of race and gender while inspiring both professional scientists and amateurs to pursue research.

Shawn Leigh Alexander, Assistant Professor of African and African American Studies and interim director of the Langston Hughes Center at the University of Kansas, discusses the efforts of T. Thomas Fortune, Ida B. Wells, W. E. B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington, and other leaders featured in his book, An Army of Lions: The Civil Rights Struggle Before the NAACP.