Cambridge American History Seminar Podcast

About Cambridge American History Seminar Podcast

Where big ideas in history meet open conversation. Each episode invites listeners into the Seminar experience, where, every Monday afternoon during term, visiting scholars and graduate students exchange ideas about new lines of historical inquiry shaping the future of the field. We talk about presenters' current research and paper, their broader academic interests and the significance of their research in the current moment. If you have any feedback, suggestions or questions, please contact our producer via email at ds2125@cantab.ac.uk. Thanks for listening!

Publisher

Cambridge American History Seminar Podcast

Category

education

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

8 Oct 2018

Latest episode

2 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

82 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   2 Sept 2026

   Prof. Nemata Blyden, "The Erskine Family of Tennessee and Liberia: Tracing a Global Black Family History"

   "Long before…American and European historians were interrogating the archives, as African historians, we were doing that. And we were using oral history and oral tradition. I think it's come in handy for me now, for a project like this." We’re joined in this episode by Nemata Blyden (Armstead Professor of Nineteenth-Century African American History, University of Virginia). Blyden’s research project in development is interested in telling the history of various places in the Atlantic world through the eyes of an extended family - the Erskine family, Blyden’s own - from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century. “That will be one of the things, I think, that will motivate me to finish this. Because so many people can’t tell these stories…The fact that we [the Erskine family] can trace our ancestors back to the 18th century is a big deal for Black people in the African diaspora. That I can pinpoint somebody in the 1790s - in a record, as a Black person -  is huge." Referenced in Discussion [03:40] Dr Blyden’s book publications: West Indians in West Africa, 1808-1880: The Diaspora in Reverse (University of Rochester Press, 2000) African Americans and Africa: A New History (Yale University Press, 2019) [17:44] ‘When I first started studying Liberia in graduate school, there was a volume by Bell Wiley… letters from formerly enslaved people who ended up in Liberia, writing back to the people who had owned them, and to relatives’: Wiley Bell I. eds., ‘Slaves no more: Letters from Liberia 1833-1869’ (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1980) [30:37] Blyden mentions ‘The great British historian Christopher Fyfe.’ Fyfe’s seminal work  ‘A History of Sierra Leone’ (1962) studies the Creole (Krio) community and is credited with sparking ‘a cultural revival’ in Sierra Leone. (Obituary, The Guardian, 2008 (https://www.theguardian.com/education/2008/oct/28/sierraleone)) Co-hosts: Shea Hendry — History PhD Candidate, Hughes Hall Shea’s research examines the children of Loyalist refugees who embodied both American citizenship and British subjecthood—concurrently and consecutively—throughout the Early National period. Megan Renoir — History PhD Candidate, Homerton College Megan’s research examines the history of U.S. land institutions, nineteenth- and twentieth-century federal Indian policy, and violence against the NCRNT. Her work expands our understanding of the relationships between federalism, Western property institutions, and intractable land conflicts. Production by Daisy Semmler — History PhD Candidate, Jesus College; MPhil, Fitzwilliam College, 2025

2. 

   4 Jul 2026

   Prof. Christa Dierksheide & Prof. Nick Guyatt, ‘Jefferson’s Wolf: A Founding Father’s Troubling Answer to the Problem of Slavery’ (Harvard University Press, 2026)

   “The wolf is a metaphor for race war, and we mean race war on a genocidal scale.” We release this episode at a historic moment. This Saturday, 4 July 2026, marks the semiquincentennial of America's founding. Few historians are better placed, with their complementary research expertise, to reassess the legacy of what is commemorated each year—and especially this year—as Independence Day. Our guests are Professor Christa Dierksheide (Brockman Foundation Jefferson Scholars Foundation Professor of History; Director, Center for the Study of the Age of Jefferson, University of Virginia) & Professor Nick Guyatt (Professor of History, Fellow of Jesus College, University of Cambridge). They are the co-authors of Jefferson’s Wolf: A Founding Father’s Troubling Answer to the Problem of Slavery (Harvard University Press, 2026). Their book takes its title from a letter (1820) in which Thomas Jefferson famously described the nation as holding slavery like "a wolf by its ear....and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go.” For Dierksheide and Guyatt, that metaphor points to something much larger than Jefferson's personal anxieties as an enslaver. It reveals a sustained effort, since the Revolution and over the course of his career, to imagine the future of the United States as a white nation — a reality dependent on racial exclusion, demographic engineering, and the forced removal of Black Americans. “It's not [Jefferson’s] understanding or his version of the Declaration that we now understand, today." "...This document, and its central idea [all men are created equal], was reimagined by African-American descendants of Monticello and a whole generation of Black activists in the 20th century. They rejected this exclusionary, narrow vision of American belonging, and reimagined and redefined this document and [the] core American creed as something based on inclusivity, and a broader claim to belonging.” Co-Hosts: Megan Renoir - fourth-year PhD candidate Megan’s research examines the history of U.S. land institutions, nineteenth- and twentieth-century federal Indian policy, and violence against the NCRNT. Her work expands our understanding of the relationships between federalism, Western property institutions, and intractable land conflicts. Charlie Colenutt - first-year PhD candidate Charlie studies British and American multinational construction firms in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He uses these companies as a way into meatier debates about the nature of late imperialism, the emergence of global capitalism, and the transition from a British to an American world order. Colenutt is the author of ‘Is This Working? The Jobs We Do, Told by the People Who Do Them’ (Picador, 2025). Production: Daisy Semmler (MPhil, 2025; PhD candidate commencing October 2026) Referenced in Discussion: [01:44] Jefferson's "wolf by the ears" letter: Thomas Jefferson to John Holmes, Monticello, 22 April 1820. (https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/159.html) [06:10] Prof. Guyatt has been on the podcast before! Hosted by Caleb Woodall and Hugh Wood: Prof. Nick Guyatt, ‘Writing American History in Uncertain Times’ (2023)  (https://open.spotify.com/episode/3NJfr1SoaSXP6RlOXse4sg?si=KFPhLx2nT0WPJgvfqvU27g) [08:30] 1970s book on Jefferson and anti-slavery: John Chester Miller. The Wolf by the Ears : Thomas Jefferson and Slavery / John Chester Miller. New York: Free Press, 1977. [20:00] Notes on the State of Virginia, available at Library of Congress: NOTES ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA. BY THOMAS JEFFERSON. (LC BOSTON: PUBLISHED BY LILLY AND WAIT, 1832)  ( https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/gdc/lhbcb/04902/04902.pdf) [27:48] Prof. Guyatt’s book on Indian removal and Jefferson: Bind Us Apart: How Enlightened Americans Invented Racial Segregation (First edition.; Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2016) (https://global.oup.com/academic/product/bind-us-apart-9780198796541?lang=de&cc=za) [41:51] Oral histories - descendants of formerly enslaved people from Monticello: Getting Word Project - African American History at Monticello  (https://gettingword.monticello.org/)

3. 

   24 Jun 2026

   Dr. Elsa Devienne, '"Paper or Plastic?": The Forgotten Movement to Ban Polystyrene in the US and the (Lost) Battle of Perception (1980s to today)'

   “What happened? At one point, we were really close to banning polystyrene. What happened?” In this episode, we’re joined by Dr Elsa Devienne (Assistant Professor, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Northumbria University), a scholar of the twentieth-century United States with expertise in environmental history, urban history, the history of the body and, more recently, discard studies and the history of waste. Dr Devienne spoke to us about her current book project on the War on Plastics. She presented part of this research in the seminar paper: '"Paper or Plastic?" The Forgotten Movement to Ban Polystyrene in the US and the (Lost) Battle of Perception (1980s to today).’ She argues that modern society has largely forgotten a significant period of activism when citizens successfully pushed for bans on polystyrene due to its links to the solid waste crisis, toxicity, and ozone depletion. Devienne identifies ‘plastic denialism’ as a primary reason these early victories failed to last. “People would not have given up on this fight if it weren't for the fact that there were loads of competing stories, loads of confusion around polystyrene and whether it was recyclable and in what capacity, and what it was: whether or not it was a better or worse material for certain uses.” Her research reminds us that the current fight against plastic pollution is not a new phenomenon but rather a protracted struggle against industry tactics that have been refined over decades to maintain the dominance of fossil-fuel-based products. "Those tactics that the plastic industry is deploying now, they've been refining them since the 80s and 90s.” Referenced in Discussion: [05:00] On Devienne's previous work Elsa Devienne, ⁠Sand Rush: The Revival of the Beach in Twentieth-Century Los Angeles. (https://global.oup.com/academic/product/sand-rush-9780197539750?cc=us&lang=en&)(originally published in French, Sorbonne Editions, 2020; Oxford University Press, 2024) [23:55] Recommended reading on the intersection of Business and the Environment See works by Adam Rome, Professor of Environment and Sustainability (University of Buffalo), including: “Beyond Compliance: The Origins of Corporate Interest in Sustainability,” Enterprise & Society (2021; 22(2): 409-437.) Berghoff, H. and Adam R., eds. Green Capitalism?: Business and the Environment in the Twentieth Century (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017) (https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv2t4bkc⁠) [31:55] Talking to author John Javna John Javna, ‘50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth,’ (EarthWorks Press: Berkeley, California, 1989) [34:26] “That article is an example of what I call ‘plastic denialism” (says Devienne). See: Damian Carrington, “‘A bombshell’: doubt cast on discovery of microplastics throughout human body” (⁠https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jan/13/microplastics-human-body-doubt⁠)  (Wed 14 Jan 2026) Co-hosts: Shea Hendry — History PhD Candidate, Hughes Hall Shea’s research examines the children of Loyalist refugees who embodied both American citizenship and British subjecthood—concurrently and consecutively—throughout the Early National period. Megan Renoir — History PhD Candidate, Homerton College Megan’s research examines the history of U.S. land institutions, nineteenth- and twentieth-century federal Indian policy, and violence against the NCRNT. Her work expands our understanding of the relationships between federalism, Western property institutions, and intractable land conflicts. Production by Daisy Semmler — History PhD Candidate, Jesus College, 2026; US History MPhil, Fitzwilliam College, 2025

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