HISTORY FORUM

Nov. 16, 2024

Workers, Nature, & Environmental Conflict in Pacific Northwest Timber Country

with Steven C. Beda

A timely book with important insights into the growing cultural and political rifts around land, natural resources, and labor.

In his new book Strong Winds and Widow Makers, Steven C. Beda challenges popular narratives about the clashes between timber workers, environmentalists, and employers. Highlighting the voices of timber workers themselves, Beda reveals a complex and nuanced history of timber-working communities and their connections to the environment, a relationship colored by class, community, understandings of nature, forest science, politics, popular culture, and economics. This in-depth look at workers embedded in the forest reveals an ethic of stewardship built around protecting jobs, protecting the forest, and protecting an important part of their own identities. 

Biography
Steven C. Beda is an associate professor of History at the University of Oregon. His first book, Strong Winds and Widow Makers: Workers, Nature, and Environmental Conflict in Pacific Northwest Timber Country won the Philip Taft Labor History Book Prize and best debut book from the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association. His research focuses on Pacific Northwest history, labor history, and environmental history, specifically timber workers and the ways rural communities have adapted to the region’s changing economy.

Dec. 7, 2024

Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad

with Matthew Delmont

World War II history as you’ve likely never heard it before.

More than one million Black soldiers served in World War II, serving in segregated units while waging a dual battle against inequality in the very country for which they were laying down their lives. The stories of these Black veterans have long been ignored, cast aside in favor of the myth of the “Good War” fought by the “Greatest Generation.” And yet without their sacrifices, the United States could not have won the war. In his new book Half American, Matthew Delmont tells the stories of Black military heroes and civil rights icons that fought for a Double Victory: against facism abroad and against racism at home. An essential and meticulously researched retelling of the war that honors the men and women who dared to fight not just for democracy abroad, but for their dreams of a freer and more equal America.

Biography
Matthew Delmont is the Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Professor of History at Dartmouth College. A Guggenheim Fellow and expert on African American history and the history of civil rights, he is the author of five books: Half American, Black Quotidian, Why Busing Failed, Making Roots, and The Nicest Kids in Town. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, the Washington Post, NPR, and several academic journals. Originally from Minneapolis, Minnesota, Delmont earned his BA from Harvard University and his MA and PhD from Brown University. For more information on Matthew Delmont, please visit matthewdelmont.com or prhspeakers.com.

Jan. 11, 2025

The Girls Who Desegregated America’s Schools

with Rachel Devlin

A new history of school desegregation in America showing how Black girls led the fight for interracial education.

Historian Rachel Devlin shows how young Black girls were at the center of the grassroots movement to desegregate America’s schools and fight racial inequity in public education. In her award-winning book A Girl Stands at the Door, Devlin takes us beyond the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision and refocuses our attention on the remarkable stories of the young Black girls who led the fight. From filing desegregation lawsuits with their parents, to bravely enduring harassment and abuse while integrating formerly all-white schools, Black girls took on the difficult work of reaching across the color line in public schools. A revelatory history that recovers the underappreciated contributions of a generation of civil rights pioneers. 

Biography
Rachel Devlin is professor of History at Rutgers University and a historian of the cultural politics of girlhood, sexuality, and race in the Postwar United States. She is the author of the award-winning book A Girl Stands at the Door: The Generation of Young Women who Desegregated America's Schools and Relative Intimacy: Fathers, Adolescent Daughters, and Postwar American Culture. 

Feb. 15, 2025

Citizens of a Stolen Land: A Conversation of Ho-Chunk History & Survivance

with Stephen Kantrowitz & Josie Lee

Learn how the Ho-Chunk have been central to Civil War-era history and the upper Midwest, past and present.

Join historian Stephen Kantrowitz and Josie Lee, Director of the Ho-Chunk Nation Museum & Cultural Center, for a conversation on Ho-Chunk history, land, and contemporary life. Together, they will speak about Kantrowitz’s new book Citizens of a Stolen Land: A Ho-Chunk History of Nineteenth-Century United States and Lee’s work in promoting, sheltering, and preserving past, present, and future Ho-Chunk ways of life. Kantrowitz’s book reconsiders the Civil War and Reconstruction eras by centering the Ho-Chunk and their strategic navigation of colonization, citizenship, and race to remain in their homelands and protect their sovereignty.

Biographies
Josie Lee is an enrolled member of the Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin. She is an independent curator, artist, and museum consultant with over 10 years in the museum field. Her work has been featured at the Field Museum, La Crosse County Historical Society, Overture Center for the Arts, and more. She currently serves as the director of the Ho-Chunk Nation Museum & Cultural Center. Josie holds a MA in Museology from University of Washington and is currently a doctoral student in Civil Society & Community Studies within the School of Human Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Stephen Kantrowitz is Plaenert-Bascom and Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a historian of race, indigeneity, politics, and citizenship in the nineteenth-century United States.  In addition to Citizens of a Stolen Land, he is author of the acclaimed books More than Freedom: Fighting for Black Citizenship in a White Republic, 1829-1889 and Ben Tillman and the Reconstruction of White Supremacy. He is also an engaged public historian, working closely with two UW campus initiatives researching the university’s histories of exclusion and resistance and its Native past and present.

March 15, 2025

Fierce Desires: A New History of Sex and Sexuality in America

with Rebecca L. Davis

From an esteemed scholar, a richly textured and comprehensive history of sex and sexuality in America

In her new book Fierce Desires, Rebecca L. Davis charts the shifting and multiple roles that sex and sexuality have played in our societies and identities over more than 400 years. Drawing on a wealth of sources, Davis’s rigorous research and wide scope provides the oft-missing historical depth needed to understand how and why sexuality and gender have taken center stage in some of today’s most polarizing debates. Featuring stories across a wide spectrum of the United States, Davis demonstrates how fiercely we have valued our desires, and how far we are willing to go to defend them.

Biography
Rebecca L. Davis is the Miller Family Early Career Professor of History and an associate professor of Women and Gender Studies at the University of Delaware. She is a historian of marriage, religion, sexuality, and politics in the United States. In addition to Fierce Desires, she is author of Public Confessions: The Religious Conversions that Changed American Politics and More Perfect Unions: The American Search for Marital Bliss, and the co-editor of Heterosexual Histories. She is also a podcast host and producer and writes the newsletter Carnal Knowledge, which explains the history behind today’s headlines about gender, sexuality, and American politics. Learn more at rebeccaldavis.com.

April 12, 2025

Asian American Histories of the United States

with Catherine Ceniza Choy

An innovative and expansive history of Asian Americans spanning nearly two centuries.

Award-winning historian Catherine Ceniza Choy’s Asian American Histories of the United States is a nearly 200-year history of Asian migration, labor, and community formation in the US. Reckoning with the surge in anti-Asian violence during the COVID-19 pandemic, Choy presents an urgent social history of the fastest growing group of Americans. The book features the lived experiences and diverse voices of immigrants, refugees, US-born Asian Americans, multiracial Americans, and workers from industries spanning agriculture to healthcare. Despite significant Asian American breakthroughs in American politics, arts, and popular culture in the 21st century, a profound lack of understanding of Asian American history permeates American culture. This ambitious book is fundamental to understanding the American experience and its existential crises of the early 21st century.

Biography
Catherine Ceniza Choy is an Asian American historian and professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. In addition to Asian American Histories of the United States, she is the author of the books Empire of Care: Nursing and Migration in Filipino American History and Global Families: A History of Asian International Adoption in America. Choy also co-edited the anthology, Gendering the Trans-Pacific World, and is an engaged public scholar, having been featured in many national media outlets such as The Atlantic, The New York Times, and NBC News.