Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies (University of Georgia Press, 2019), edited by Leslie M. Harris , J ames T. Campbell , and Alfred L. Brophy , is the first edited collection of scholarly essays devoted solely to the histories and legacies of this subject on North American campuses and in their Atlantic contexts. Gathering together contributions from scholars, activists, and administrators, the volume combines two broad bodies of work: (1) historically based interdisciplinary re...
Apr 28, 2020•1 hr•Ep. 193
How best to teach history and, for that matter any social science subject, to college students? The traditional answer has been to lecture them. Given that the typical length of an attentive lecture-listener is about 15 minutes, this might not be the best way to get the job done. Beginning in the late 1990s, a group of professors offered another technique now called "Reacting to the Past." You can read all about it here . Essentially, the "Reacting" technique asks students to play the roles of h...
Apr 13, 2020•53 min
We've grown to understand in the past few weeks how worlds can change in just a few days. Peter Fritzsche 's new book Hitler's First Hundred Days: When Germans Embraced the Third Reich (Basic Books, 2020) is an extraordinary examination of how, in just a few months, Germans got used to living around, among, and, mostly, in unity with, Nazis. Fritzsche's argument is sophisticated and nuanced. But it's the details of everyday life he provides that make this book stand out. Fritzsche uses diaries, ...
Apr 06, 2020•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 113
Paradox is a sophisticated kind of magic trick. A magician's purpose is to create the appearance of impossibility, to pull a rabbit from an empty hat. Yet paradox doesn't require tangibles, like rabbits or hats. Paradox works in the abstract, with words and concepts and symbols, to create the illusion of contradiction. There are no contradictions in reality, but there can appear to be. In Sleight of Mind: 75 Ingenious Paradoxes in Mathematics, Physics, and Philosophy (MIT Press, 2020), Matt Cook...
Mar 30, 2020•53 min•Ep. 46
From Left to Right: Lucy S. Dawidowicz, the New York Intellectuals, and the Politics of Jewish History (Wayne State University Press, 2020) is the first comprehensive biography of Dawidowicz (1915-1990), a pioneer historian in the field that is now called Holocaust studies. Dawidowicz was a household name in the postwar years, not only because of her scholarship but also due to her political views. Dawidowicz, like many other New York intellectuals, was a youthful communist, became an FDR democr...
Mar 17, 2020•59 min•Ep. 704
In A Specter Haunting Europe: The Myth of Judeo-Bolshevism (Harvard University Press, 2018), Paul Hanebrink , Professor of History and Jewish Studies at Rutgers University, traces the complex history of the myth of Judeo-Bolshevism. Hanebrink shows how Fascists, Conservatives and Nazis imagined Jewish Bolsheviks as enemies who crossed borders to subvert order from within and bring destructive ideas from abroad. This is a hundred years history that traces how this myth transformed through the Col...
Mar 16, 2020•37 min•Ep. 182
Art Spiegelman's Maus is the story of an American cartoonist's efforts to uncover and record his father's story of survival of the Holocaust. It is also a cartoon, where the Jews are mice, the Nazis cats, the Poles dogs, and the French, well, you'll have to read it. It's a story of survival and also a story of silences, and how the next generation can find and make sense of stories that seem to defy representation in their sheer horror. It's also a triumph in story-telling and a serious meditati...
Mar 10, 2020•59 min•Ep. 71
It's possible to organize a 20th-century German history course around the date 9 November. In 1918, Phillipp Schedemann proclaimed the creation of a new German Republic. In 1989, 9 November saw the opening of the Berlin Wall. In between, in 1938, Krystallnacht began on the night of 9 November. Krystallnacht, as most students of the Holocaust know, was a short, intense period of state-sponsored terror against those Germans identified as Jewish. It marked a dramatic escalation in the persecution o...
Mar 05, 2020•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 122
How does the world of book reviews work? In Inside the Critics’ Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times (Princeton University Press, 2020), Phillipa Chong , assistant professor in sociology at McMaster University , provides a unique sociological analysis of how critics confront the different types of uncertainty associated with their practice. The book explores how reviewers get matched to books, the ethics and etiquette of negative reviews and ‘punching up’, along with professional identities...
Feb 25, 2020•42 min•Ep. 154
Despite the post-Holocaust UN convention to ensure the protection of minority communities globally, the International community has failed to notice the signs of the Rohingya genocide, but what stopped them from taking subsequent action so long after the atrocity? Who really were responsible? And what impact do the continuing campaigns by the displaced Rohingya and international civil society have? Dr. Simon Adams, Director of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, explores these a...
Jan 31, 2020•11 min•Ep. 6
If you’re a grad student facing the ugly reality of finding a tenure-track job, you could easily be forgiven for thinking about a career change. However, if you’ve spent the last several years working on a PhD, or if you’re a faculty member whose career has basically consisted of higher ed, switching isn’t so easy. PhD holders are mostly trained to work as professors, and making easy connections to other careers is no mean feat. Because the people you know were generally trained to do the same s...
Jan 30, 2020•38 min•Ep. 103
Holocaust research tends to concentrate on certain geographic regions. We know much about the Holocaust in Poland, Germany and Western Europe. We are learning more and more about the 'Holocaust by Bullets' in the territories of the Soviet Union. This is obviously a good thing. But that emphasis leaves us knowing much less about other regions in Europe. In particular we know less about those areas annexed or subordinated to Germany before the outbreak of war in September of 1939. Wolf Gruner has ...
Jan 23, 2020•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 109
Jennifer Cazenave ’s An Archive of the Catastrophe: The Unused Footage of Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah (SUNY Press, 2019) is a fascinating analysis of the 220 hours of outtakes edited out of the final nine and a half-hour 1985 film with which listeners and readers might be familiar. Well known around the world as one of the greatest documentary films ever made, and certainly one of the most important works/artifacts of Holocaust history and memory, Lanzmann’s eventual finished film emerged from an as...
Jan 20, 2020•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 73
In the years following Hitler’s rise to power, German Jews faced increasingly restrictive antisemitic laws, and many responded by fleeing to more tolerant countries. Cities of Refuge: German Jews in London and New York, 1935-1945 (SUNY Press, 2019), compares the experiences of Jewish refugees who immigrated to London and New York City by analyzing letters, diaries, newspapers, organizational documents, and oral histories. Lori Gemeiner-Bihler examines institutions, neighborhoods, employment, lan...
Jan 16, 2020•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 179
Judi Rever ’s In Praise of Blood: The Crimes of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (Random House, 2018) is investigative journalism at its finest. Through great personal risk to so many of those involved, Rever and her sources tell a story far different from the one most people who are familiar with the Rwandan Genocide would recognize. Synthesizing field research; testimonies from refugees, defectors and dissenters, and governmental and intergovernmental officials; and analysis of primary documents, R...
Jan 14, 2020•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 108
Every generation returns to the titanic heroes and villains of the 20th century. And every generation produces a new set of biographies--often immense--in an effort to understand the role of that eras main figures. In the past three years, three important new books have reassessed Hitler's life, beliefs and actions. Two of the authors, Volker Ulrich and Peter Longerich, are historians of Germany who are German. The third, our guest for today's interview, is British. In his new book Hitler: A Glo...
Jan 08, 2020•29 min•Ep. 107
In The Rise and Fall of Comradeship: Hitler’s Soldiers, Male Bonding and Mass Violence in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge University Press, 2017), Professor Thomas Kühne writes an innovative account of how the concept of comradeship shaped the actions, emotions and ideas of ordinary German soldiers across the two world wars and during the Holocaust. Using individual soldiers' diaries, personal letters and memoirs, Kühne reveals the ways in which soldiers' longing for community, and the practice...
Dec 17, 2019•1 hr 8 min
In her new book Yellow Star, Red Star: Holocaust Remembrance after Communism (Cornell University Press, 2019) Jelena Subotić asks why Holocaust memory continues to be so deeply troubled―ignored, appropriated, and obfuscated―throughout Eastern Europe, even though it was in those lands that most of the extermination campaign occurred. As part of accession to the European Union, Subotić shows, East European states were required to adopt, participate in, and contribute to the established Western nar...
Dec 12, 2019•50 min•Ep. 56
We’ve all heard that a picture is worth a thousand words, but what if we don’t understand what we’re looking at? Social media has made charts, infographics, and diagrams ubiquitous―and easier to share than ever. We associate charts with science and reason; the flashy visuals are both appealing and persuasive. Pie charts, maps, bar and line graphs, and scatter plots (to name a few) can better inform us, revealing patterns and trends hidden behind the numbers we encounter in our lives. In short, g...
Dec 03, 2019•58 min•Ep. 42
Claudia Moscovic i’s recent book, Holocaust Memories: A Survey of Holocaust Memoirs, Histories, Novels, and Films (Hamilton Books, 2019), is intended for educators and politicians to draw attention to and educate people about the Never Again Education Act. Moscovici: “Nearly eighty years have passed since the Holocaust. There have been hundreds of memoirs, histories and novels written about it, yet many fear that this important event may fall into oblivion. As Holocaust survivors pass away, thei...
Dec 02, 2019•31 min•Ep. 106
How does violence against civilians become permissible in wartime? Why do some communities experience violence while others do not? In her new book, Mila Dragojević develops the concept of amoral communities to find an answer to these questions. In Amoral Communities: Collective Crimes in Time of War (Cornell University Press, 2019), Dragojević studies how, in places where ethnic and political identities become linked, targeted violence against civilians becomes possible through the exclusion of...
Nov 27, 2019•45 min•Ep. 53
Raul Hilberg was a giant in the field of Genocide and Holocaust Studies. Frequently cited as the founder of the field in the United States, Hilberg wrote, taught, and mentored for decades. In a series of influential books, he scouted out the terrain, mapped events, people and personalities, and offered lenses through which to view our field of study. His students and mentees embarked on their own journeys and, in their own ways, set an agenda we continue to pursue today. In German Railroads, Jew...
Nov 27, 2019•52 min•Ep. 104
Why don’t governments do more to prevent genocide? What role does the public have in compelling their governments to take an active stand in the face of genocide? In Reluctant Interveners: America's Failed Responses to Genocide from Bosnia to Darfur (Rutgers University Press, 2019), Eyal Mayroz approaches these questions and more through an interdisciplinary lens that includes history, political science, rhetorical studies, and media studies. In doing so, Mayroz focuses on the United States and ...
Nov 14, 2019•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 105
Millions of tourists visit Holocaust museums and memorials every year. Holocaust tourism is a thriving industry and plays a crucial role in Holocaust memorialization and remembrance. However, Holocaust tourism is not without criticism. Some argue that sightseeing at sites of genocide is cringeworthy, offensive, inappropriate, and superficial. In Postcards from Auschwitz: Holocaust Tourism and the Meaning of Remembrance (NYU Press, 2018), Daniel Reynolds examines the phenomenon of Holocaust touri...
Nov 13, 2019•58 min•Ep. 131
When Tennessee’s Governor recently ordered a holiday to celebrate the memory of confederate general Nathan Bedford Forest, a convicted war criminal who helped found the Ku Klax Klan, the New York Times columnist Paul Krugman commented: “The world would be horrified if Germany announced plans to start celebrating Erich von Manstein Day.” Krugman’s point was to emphasize that to celebrate a commander of the German Army from the Nazi period does not behoove a modern democratic nation. But his analo...
Nov 06, 2019•1 hr 25 min•Ep. 78
Can justice heal? Must there be justice in order to heal? Is there such a thing as justice, something to be striven for regardless of context? Alexander L. Hinton thinks through these questions in a pair of new books. The two are companion pieces, each using Cambodia in a different way as a lens through which to look at the notion of transitional justice. In The Justice Facade: Trials of Transition in Cambodia (Oxford University Press, 2018), he argues there is something deeply mistaken in the w...
Nov 04, 2019•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 102
As you may know, university presses publish a lot of good books. In fact, they publish thousands of them every year. They are different from most trade books in that most of them are what you might called "fundamental research." Their authors--dedicated researchers one and all--provide the scholarly stuff upon which many non-fiction trade books are based. So when you are reading, say, a popular history, you are often reading UP books at one remove. Of course, some UP books are also bestsellers, ...
Nov 03, 2019•39 min•Ep. 45
The things that make people academics -- as deep fascination with some arcane subject, often bordering on obsession, and a comfort with the solitude that developing expertise requires -- do not necessarily make us good teachers. Jessamyn Neuhaus ’s Geeky Pedagogy: A Guide for Intellectuals, Introverts, and Nerds Who Want to Be Effective Teachers (West Virginia University Press, 2019) helps us to identify and embrace that geekiness in us and then offers practical, step-by-step guidelines for how ...
Oct 24, 2019•33 min•Ep. 81
In his new book, The Investigator: Demons of the Balkan War (University of Nebraska Press, 2019), Vladimir Dzuro , a retired Czech police commissioner, provides a first-hand look at the establishment of the International Crime Tribunal for Yugoslavia to prosecute Balkan war criminals. In contrast to the Nuremberg trials, these trials relied upon the traditional work of police detectives to provide the evidence and witnesses for the trials in the Hague. Through his thoughtful yet tantalizing narr...
Oct 22, 2019•56 min•Ep. 103
Christopher Mauriello ’s groundbreaking book Forced Confrontations: The Politics of Dead Bodies in Germany at the End of World War II (Lexington Books, 2017) focuses on American soldiers reactions to the victims of the Holocaust. Using photographs, memoirs, and letters from US soldiers, Mauriello attempts to recreate the emotional and traumatic reactions these men had when confronted with the worst of Nazi Germany. And, as a result, they made German civilians confront these horrors as an unoffic...
Sep 25, 2019•41 min•Ep. 101
