Reckoning with Jason Herbert

This week we invite Scott Laderman to talk about Point Break (1991) and his book Empire in Waves: A Political History of Surfing. We talk about depictions of surfing in this film and others along with the origins of the pursuit, its commodification and commercialization, how surfers responded to genocide and apartheid in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, the greatest surfing movies of all time, and greatest surfers of all time. This is a really fun and deep dive into surf and film history. I think you're gonna dig it.

About our guest:
Scott Laderman  broadly explores the various ways that Americans have encountered and ascribed meaning to the rest of the world. His first book, Tours of Vietnam: War, Travel Guides, and Memory (Duke University Press, 2009), examines issues of tourism and memory in postcolonial Vietnam. His second monograph, Empire in Waves: A Political History of Surfing (University of California Press, 2014), combines the passion for wave-riding he developed while growing up in California with his professional interest in the history of U.S. foreign relations. His most recent book, The “Silent Majority” Speech: Richard Nixon, the Vietnam War, and the Origins of the New Right (Routledge, 2019), uses Nixon’s most famous presidential address to probe the last years of the war in Vietnam and the rise of the modern right-wing political movement.

With Edwin Martini, he co-edits the Culture and Politics in the Cold War and Beyond book series for the University of Massachusetts Press, and he has written for numerous popular publications, including the New York Times, Washington Post, South China Morning Post, and Star Tribune.

This week, I invited I invited on two absolute luminaries in the gaming world in Emily Friedman and Trevor Valle to talk not only about the film Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, but about the world around D&D complete with the history of the game and the politics surrounding table top gaming. And folks, this is such a cool deep dive into D&D. This is an appropriately dragon-sized episode; my gift to you for the final HATM Podcast of 2023.

About our guests:
Emily C. Friedman is an Associate Professor of English at Auburn University and teaches courses on British literature, book history, and game narratives. Trained as a book historian, narratologist, and digital humanist, her work examines the history of cultural production outside of commercial mass media from the eighteenth century to today, from never-published manuscript fiction to emerging media. Now one of the senior scholars and public intellectuals in the field of "Actual Play," a new media form where roleplaying games are performed for audiences, her research on the topic has appeared in multiple academic books and journals, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and she is a regular contributor to Polygon. She is at work on two book projects on Actual Play: a field-defining history of the form online, as well as a multiauthored critical companion to major Actual Play Dimension 20.

Trevor Valle  an American paleontologist and wildlife biologist. In addition to his extensive career in paleontology he has also served as personality on several notable paleontology and wildlife television programs and documentaries. He is also a professional TTRPG Dungeon Master. He has been a guest on numerous podcasts including Breaking Bio, the Science Enthusiast Podcast, and the Joe Rogan Experience. 

It's Christmas time and that means visiting an old classic. This week doctoral student Vaughn Joy joins in to talk about A Christmas Story and her work looking at how the American government exerted control over Christmas films as a way of influencing  the national narrative. We talk about all we love and hate with this movie, the history of Christmas films, and yes, continue to debate whether on not Die Hard is a Christmas movie. 

About our guest:
Vaughn’s research interests lie in entertainment and social histories, particularly in the post-war period in the United States. For her PhD research project, Vaughn is exploring the extent of Hollywood’s reflection of and influence on the political and cultural climates of the early Cold War period through the propagandising of Christmas films from 1946 to 1961. By exploring the cinematic representations of Americans and their traditions during the Christmas season, the thesis argues that these sentimental films, and other innocuous media of the like, are not simply feel-good media, but rather provide commentary on the world around them. 

Before pursuing a research degree at UCL, Vaughn completed an MA in History at UCL and an MPhil in Classics at Trinity College Dublin with dissertation titles “Venus in Manhattan: A Study of Gender Relations in Post-WWII New York” and “Reproductive Demonesses: Mental Escapism from Reproductive Failures in the Ancient World,” respectively.

Alongside bylines in The Washington Post and Red Pepper Magazine, Vaughn is an active public scholar with appearances on numerous podcasts and radio shows including NPR. Vaughn is also a researcher and co-host on the Impressions of America podcast which explores American politics, culture, and media in the latter 20th century, as well as creator, researcher, and host of the Joy of Star Wars podcast melding themes in American history with those in the Star Wars franchise.

This week guest Kate Jewell stops by to talk about one of the more interesting John Cusack performances in the film High Fidelity. This movie features some phenomenal performances by Cusack, Jack Black, Todd Louiso, and one very weird Tim Robbins. We also talk about Kate's new book Live from the Underground: A History of College Radio. This might be in your Top 5 favorite episodes ever.

About our guest:
Katherine Rye Jewell is Professor of History at Fitchburg State University, where she teaches modern U.S. history. She is a historian of the business and politics of culture in the twentieth-century United States. Her book, Dollars for Dixie: Business and the Transformation of Conservatism in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge Studies on the American South) (Cambridge University Press, 2017), explored the intersection of southern culture and politics through industrialists’ responses to the New Deal

She turns attention to another kind of business in her new book, Live from the Underground: A History of College Radio,  from the University of North Carolina Press. Taking aim at the informal spaces that shaped the music industry since the 1970s, Jewell uncovers how college DJs confronted the politics of culture, higher education, and identity.

With Godzilla Minus One tearing up the American and global box office, it's time for another EMERGENCY PODCAST. This week we are joined by two amazing scholars of Japanese social and cultural history in Bill Tsutsui and Akiki Takenaka. We talk about our first impressions of the film, where it fits into Godzilla and WWII lore, and the history of Godzilla himself. This is such a cool conversation and I'm so excited to bring it to you.

About our guests:
Bill Tsutsui is an award-winning scholar and teacher, an experienced academic leader,
and an outspoken supporter of the public humanities, international education,
and more inclusive, accessible colleges and universities.  He researches, writes, and speaks widely on Japanese economic and environmental history, Japanese popular culture (especially the Godzilla movies), Japanese-American identity, and issues in higher education.  He is highly opinionated about BBQ, proud to have once driven the Zamboni at an NHL game, and slightly embarrassed to be Level 40 in Pokemon Go. Find him at https://www.billtsutsui.com/

Akiko Takenaka specializes in social and cultural history of modern Japan. Her research involves memory and historiography of the Asia-Pacific War, gender and peace activism, and history museums. Her teaching interests include gender, war and society, nationalism, memory studies, and visual culture. Prior to coming to UK, she has taught as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Chicago and the University of Michigan.

Professor Takenaka's first book, entitled Yasukuni Shrine: History, Memory, and Japan's Unending Postwar (University of Hawai'i Press, Studies of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University), explores Yasukuni Shrine as a physical space, object of visual and spatial representation, and site of spatial practice in order to highlight the complexity of Yasukuni’s past and critique the official narratives that postwar debates have responded to. Her second book project Mothers Against War: Gender, Motherhood, and Peace Activism in Postwar Japan is under advance contract with the University of Hawai'i Press. Her research has been funded by long-term research fellowships by Fulbright and the Japan Foundation. Find her on twitter at @ata225

Ready for a deep dive on the Middle Ages? This week Patrick Wyman, host of Tides of History and The Pursuit of Dadliness and author of The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World stops by to talk about Ridley Scott's The Last Duel, the 2021 epic that closely follows one of the last judicial duels of the Middle Ages. The film, starring Matt Damon, Adam Driver, and Jodie Comer has picked up a following since its release. Our conversation talks about why Patrick thinks is one of the most accurate films he has seen, along with questions over social status, chivalry, warfare, religion, the Plague, and even the Ottoman Empire. 

About our guest:
Patrick Wyman holds a PhD in history from the University of Southern California. He previously worked as a sports journalist, covering mixed martial arts and boxing from 2013 to 2018. His work has been featured in Deadspin, The Washington Post, Bleacher Report, and others. He is currently host of the podcast, Tides of History, and previously the host of Fall of Rome. You can find him on twitter at @Patrick_Wyman 

This week we welcome Lindsay Chervinsky back to the pod to talk about 1995's The American President. We talk about just how revolutionary was the idea of a president, the history of presidential relationships, scandals in the White House, and even presidential pets. This was a lot of fun. I hope you like it.

About our guest:
Dr. Lindsay M. Chervinsky is a presidential historian. She is the author of the award-winning book, The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution, co-editor of Mourning the Presidents: Loss and Legacy in American Culture, and the forthcoming book, Making the Presidency: John Adams and the Precedents That Forged the Republic. She regularly writes for public audiences in the Wall Street Journal, Ms. Magazine, The Daily Beast, The Bulwark, Time Magazine, USA Today, CNN, and the Washington Post. 

With Napoleon hitting the big screen this past week, we decided it was time for our first emergency podcast. This week we recruited French history scholars Corinne Gressang and Laura O'Brien onboard to talk about what the film did right, what it did wrong, and why exactly can't we seem to get Bonaparte right onscreen.

About our guests:
Dr. Corinne Gressang began as an Assistant Professor of History at Slippery Rock University in the Fall of 2023. She specializes in the history of the French Revolution, but she teaches various courses on Early Modern and Modern European History. She grew up in Western Pennsylvania and received her undergraduate degree in History with a minor in Legal Studies from Grove City College in 2013. From there, she received her MA and Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky in 2015 and 2020, respectively. She spent three years teaching at Erskine College in Due West, SC as an Assistant Professor before moving back home to Western Pennsylvania to teach at Slippery Rock.

Her dissertation topic developed after reading an editorial in a short-lived Catholic newspaper called L’Ange Gabriel (1799). The editor argued that the French nuns had suffered expulsion from their convents, and they were the most unfortunate victims of the Revolutionary decade. Dr. Gressang’s curiosity about what became of these women became the focus of her dissertation which she is currently revising for publication.

She is a member of the American Historical Association, the Western Society for French History, the Society for French Historical Studies, Phi Alpha Theta, and the American Catholic Historical Association. Dr. Gressang currently serves as an Assistant Digital Coordinator for the Society for French Historical Studies and is a member of the executive council for the Western Society for French History. She has won numerous teaching awards including the Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award from the University of Kentucky in 2018-2019 and the Younts Excellence in Teaching Award in 2021-2022 from Erskine College.

Dr. Laura O'Brien joined Northumbria University  in September 2015, having previously taught at University College Dublin, Trinity College Dublin, Université Paris 1 (Panthéon-Sorbonne) and the University of Sunderland. She completed her PhD at University College Dublin, where she held an Irish Research Council ‘Government of Ireland’ Postgraduate Scholarship, and was a doctoral fellow at the UCD Humanities Institute. Between 2010 and 2013 Laura was an Irish Research Council/Marie Curie Actions COFUND Fellow, based at Trinity College Dublin and the Centre de recherches en histoire du XIXe siècle, Université Paris 1 (Panthéon-Sorbonne).

In honor of Thanksgiving and Season 2 of High on the Hog, we thought it might be fun to bring back another older episode of the Historians At The Movies Podcast during our two week break. Leftovers, if you will. This episode features two of my food history scholars in Adrian E. Miller and Mark Johnson, talking about African American culinary traditions, gender roles in the kitchen, and some of their favorite recipes. I hope you're coming back for seconds on this.

About our guests:
Adrian Miller is a food writer, James Beard Award winner, attorney, and certified barbecue judge who lives in Denver, Colorado. Adrian received an A.B in International Relations from Stanford University in 1991, and a J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center in 1995.  From 1999 to 2001, Miller served as a special assistant to President Bill Clinton with his Initiative for One America – the first free-standing office in the White House to address issues of racial, religious and ethnic reconciliation. Miller went on to serve as a senior policy analyst for Colorado Governor Bill Ritter Jr. From 2004 to 2010, he served on the board for the Southern Foodways Alliance. In June 2019, Adrian lectured in the Masters of Gastronomy program at the Università di Scienze Gastronomiche (nicknamed the “Slow Food University”) in Pollenzo, Italy. He is currently the executive director of the Colorado Council of Churches and, as such, is the first African American, and the first layperson, to hold that position.

Mark Johnson is an assistant professor in history at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga. He specializes in the history of the United States and, specifically, the U.S. South and African American History. In 2017, he published An Irresistible History of Alabama Barbecue: From Wood Pit to White Sauce. In 2021, he published Rough Tactics: Black Performance in Political Spectacles, 1877-1932 came out with University Press of Mississippi. He previously published articles in Southern Cultures and Louisiana History. Currently, he’s working on a cultural history of bacon in the United States tentatively titled American Bacon: The History of a Food Phenomenon with University of Georgia Press.

This week HATM Podcast is on hiatus so we thought we'd rerelease an older episode for those of you who maybe haven't had the opportunity to explore the back catalog yet. This week's guest is my great friend Brett Rushforth and we are talking about both his favorite film- Up in the Air - and his work in 17th century New France. Looking back, this is one of the more interesting conversations I've ever been part of.  This episode is also one of the first we ever recorded (a testament to Brett's belief in this pod) so you'll hear some differences between how we did the show when we started and where we are now, so kind of a cool little archive. We'll also be livetweeting this film on Sunday, November 19th, so listen in before and see how that affects what you see. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the show. Again.

About our guest:
Brett Rushforth is a scholar of the early modern Atlantic world whose research focuses on comparative slavery, Native North America, and French colonialism and empire.

His first book, Colonial North America and the Atlantic World: A History in Documents (co-edited with Paul W. Mapp), uses primary documents to trace the history of North America in its Atlantic context from the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries.

His second book, Bonds of Alliance: Indigenous and Atlantic Slaveries in New France, examined the enslavement of American Indians by French colonists and their Native allies, tracing the dynamic interplay between Native systems of captivity and slavery and French plantation-based racial slavery. In 2013, Bonds of Alliance was named the best book on American social history by the Organization of American Historians (Curti Award), the best book on French colonialism before 1848 by the French Colonial Historical Society (Boucher Prize), the best book on the history of European expansion by the Forum on European Expansion and Global Interaction (FEEGI Biennial Book Prize), and the best book on French history and culture by the Center for French and Francophone Studies at Duke University (Wylie Prize). It was also one of three nominated finalists for the Frederick Douglass Book Prize for the best book on the history of slavery.

He recently completed, with Christopher Hodson, a book titled Discovering Empire: France and the Atlantic World from the Crusades to the Age of Revolution, which explores the relationships between Africans, Native Americans, and Europeans across four centuries, from roughly 1400 through Haitian independence in 1804. It will be published by Oxford University Press in 2024.

Professor Rushforth works with graduate students in the fields of comparative slavery, early America, early modern Atlantic world, African diaspora, legal history, and Native American history. Before joining the faculty at the University of Oregon, he taught for a decade at the College of William and Mary and was senior academic staff at the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture. From 2013 to 2017 he was the book review editor of the William and Mary Quarterly.