In this episode, Kate Carpenter interviews Dr. Anna O. Law, a political science who retrained herself in historical methods to write her new book, Migration and the Origins of American Citizenship. Anna is a professor of political science and Herbert Kurz Chair in Constitutional Rights at CUNY Brooklyn College. In her new books, she takes a close look at which parts and levels of government in the United States have controlled people's ability to move around and across borders throughout the country's history. It's a history that is especially pertinent now, as we await the Supreme Court's forthcoming decision about the Trump administration's attempt to end the right to birthright citizenship protected under the 14th amendment of the constitution.

Anna and Kate talked about what it meant to think like a historian as well as a political scientist. She also divulged her decidedly analog research tools, the feedback she asks colleagues to give on her drafts, and her advice for any writer deciding on a press for publishing a book.

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Note: Links to bookshop.org are affiliate links. If you purchase books through these links, not only will you be supporting the author, but you will also help to keep Drafting the Past going. Thank you!

• Anna O. Law's website
• Anna Law, Migration and the Origins of American Citizenship
• Anna Law, The Immigration Battle in American Courts
• Metal page darts
• Sarasa gel pens
• Anna's favorite Clairefontaine notebooks
• Anna Law on BlueSky
• Anna's blog post about writing the second book
• Episode 102: Gautham Rao
• Megan Kate Nelson, The Westerners: Mythmaking and Belonging on the American Frontier and The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West (and my first and second interviews with her)
• Lucy Salyer, Laws Harsh As Tigers: Chinese Immigrants and the Shaping of Modern Immigration Law and Under the Starry Flag: How a Band of Irish Americans Joined the Fenian Revolt and Sparked a Crisis Over Citizenship

It's not every day that I find myself so invested in the characters of a history book that I stay up way past my bed time to find out what happens next, but that's exactly what happened when I read the new book by today's guest, Dr. Charlotte Brooks.

Charlotte is a professor of history at Baruch College, which is part of the City University of New York, or CUNY, system. She is a scholar of race, immigration, and urban history, and is especially known for her work on Chinese American history. She is the author of four books. Her first three books were more aimed at an academic audience, but for her fourth book she wanted to try something a little different. The book that resulted is The Moys of New York and Shanghai: One Family's Extraordinary Journey Through War and Revolution. It's a group biography that tells the stories of six siblings, born to Chinese immigrant parents, and how they challenged the limitations and racism they faced in the United States, how many of them sought opportunities in China, and the ways they navigated the tumultuous world in which they lived in both countries in the first half of the 20th century.

They are fascinating characters, but Charlotte uses them to give us a window into the history of an entire generation of Chinese American families that many Americans know little about. I talked with Charlotte about what finally motivated her to write the book that she had been dreaming about, as well as what it was like to work with the Moy descendants, how her narrative makes the siblings so compelling, and why it was still a tough sell as a trade book.

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Note: Bookshop.org links are affiliate links. When you buy books through these links, Drafting the Past receives a small percentage of the purchase price. Thanks for helping to support the show!

• Charlotte Brooks, The Moys of New York and Shanghai: One Family's Extraordinary Journey Through War and Revolution
• Charlotte Brooks, American Exodus: Second-Generation Chinese Americans in China, 1901-1949
• Charlotte Brooks, Between Mao and McCarthy: Chinese American Politics in the Cold War Years
• Charlotte Brooks, Alien Neighbors, Foreign Friends: Asian Americans, Housing, and the Transformation of Urban California
• Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA)
• Ellen Wu
• Mae Ngai
• Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency
• Virtual Shanghai Project
• Historical Photographs of China
• Gwulo: Old Hong Kong

Today's guest, Dr. Tara Mulder, gets real about the challenges of writing while moving between temporary jobs, juggling a ton of teaching, and struggling to find a tenure track position. But also told me why that struggle brought a surprising amount of freedom and led to a much more creative and entertaining book.

These days, Tara is an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, although she did not get that position until after her book was nearly published. She's a specialist in medicine, sex, and gender in antiquity, and her book is called A Womb of One's Own: Lost Histories of Childbirth in Ancient Rome. In it, she brings the experiences of pregnancy and childbirth of Roman women brilliantly to life, turning scraps of archival materials into richly detailed narratives. In addition to her teaching, Tara also previously worked as a managing editor of Eidolon, an online classics journal that brought classics scholarship to the public in a playful, easy to read voice. You'll hear more in our conversation about how that experience shaped Tara's writing. We also talked about how her lived experiences, especially as the daughter of a homebirth midwife, helped her read the archive, and how keeping her writing going means trusting in her future self.

Heads up: Links to bookshop.org are affiliate links. If you buy books from these links, the podcast gets a small percentage—it's an awesome way to support our guests and the show at the same time.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Tara Mulder, A Womb of One's Own: Lost Histories of Childbirth in Ancient Rome
• Eidolon archives
• Scrivener
• Anna Bonnell Friedin, Birthing Romans: Childbearing and Its Risks in Imperial Rome
• Anna Tatarkiewicz, The 'Cursus Laborum' of Roman Women: Social and Medical Aspects of the Transition from Puberty to Motherhood
• Saidiya Hartman, "Venus in Two Acts"
• Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812

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Episode 100! I'm thrilled to welcome historian of science Dr. Jessica Riskin.

Jessica is the Frances and Charles Field Professor of History at Stanford University. She's the author of three books and has edited two additional collections. She has also written extensively for academic journals and has published some highly entertaining book reviews and essays for the New York Review of Books and the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Her newest book, and her first with a trade press, is The Power of Life: The Invention of Biology and the Revolutionary Science of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. It's a biography of French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, whose early theories of evolution have been discredited and ignored. But in this book, Jessica traces his life, restores his thinking, and shows not only that we have Lamarck all wrong, but also what we lose when we turn away from his expansive approach to science. It's an interesting subject, but in Jessica's hands it transforms into a deeply engaging, witty, surprising, and fascinating read. I loved learning more about how her love of novels helps her bring the past to life, how transformative it has been to work with great editors, and how she manages to write a book that is both a delightful read and a persuasive argument.

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Note that bookshop.org links are affiliate links that generate a small commission to support the show if you purchase books using these links.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Jessica Riskin's faculty website
• Jessica Riskin, The Power of Life: The Invention of Biology and the Revolutionary Science of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
• Jessica Riskin, The Restless Clock: A History of the Centuries-Long Argument over What Makes Living Things Tick
• Jessica Riskin, Science in the Age of Sensibility: The Sentimental Empiricists of the French Enlightenment
• Riskin at the The New York Review of Books
• Riskin at Los Angeles Review of Books
• FriXion Erasable Markers
• Natalie Zemon Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre
• Peter Elbow, Writing with Power: Techniques for Mastering the Writing Process
• Ken Alder, The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error That Transformed the World
• Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms

David Perry returns to talk with Kate about his new book, The Public Scholar: A Practical Handbook. If you've ever been curious about writing essays or op-eds, but are unsure where to get started, David's book should answer pretty much any question you can dream up. I think this book is hugely helpful, and I was glad to hear more from David about why he wrote it—and to get answers to a few more burning questions about public scholarship (or, you know, just a pep talk).

When David first joined me on Drafting the Past during the show's first season in 2022, we talked about The Bright Ages: A New History of Europe that he had just published with co-writer Matthew Gabriele. I highly recommend that you go back and listen to that episode, Episode 10. It's especially inspiring for anyone interested in co-writing or who does not find writing to come to them naturally. Since that conversation, David and Matthew have co-authored a second book called Oathbreakers: The War of Brothers That Shattered an Empire and Made Medieval Europe. And David has continued to write prolifically for the public. He has also been enthusiastic about giving other scholars the tools to do the same, and he started offering a workshop on public writing for university faculty and graduate students. Now, he's bringing that advice to all of us in a short, essential book called The Public Scholar: A Practical Handbook.

Note that bookshop.org links are affiliate links that generate a small commission to support the show if you purchase books using these links.

Sign up for the Drafting the Past newsletter for updates on the show and more.

Mentioned in this episode:

• David's website
• David M. Perry, The Public Scholar: A Practical Handbook
• Matthew Gabriele and David M. Perry, Oathbreakers: The War of Brothers That Shattered an Empire and Made Medieval Europe
• Matthew Gabriele and David M. Perry, The Bright Ages: A New History of Europe
• Matthew and David's newsletter, Modern Medieval
• Drafting the Past Episode 10: David M. Perry Writes Out Loud
• David's Star Tribune column about Irish music: "This St. Patrick's Day, don't forget Irish music's anti-fascist roots"
• The Instagram reel promoting his column that we talked about at the start of the episode
• Tressie McMillan Cottom
• Irina Dumitrescu

Host Kate Carpenter is joined by drug historian Dr. Emily Dufton to talk about researching and writing Emily's newest book, Addiction, Inc.: Medication-Assisted Treatment and America's Forgotten War on Drugs.

Emily holds a PhD in American studies and works full-time as a writer. Her first book was Grass Roots: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Marijuana in America. Thanks to her expertise in drug history, she regularly serves as a commentator on cannabis history and news, and she also writes essays and op eds for public outlets.

Addiction, Inc. tells the history of medication-assisted treatment for illicit drug addiction, beginning with its emergence during President Richard Nixon's war on drugs in the 1970s as a radical approach to public health. From there she traces the controversies, missed opportunities, and privatization that have scrambled access to what is considered the gold standard of addiction treatment, even as America wrestles with an opioid overdose epidemic. Emily is the recipient of multiple awards that supported the book's creation, including a J. Anthony Lukas Works-in-Progress Award, a Robert B. Silvers Grant, and a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant.

We spoke about the process of applying for those awards and why writers should try for grants, the home disaster that derailed the beginnings of this project, and how she balances feedback with her own vision for her book—even when there is A LOT of feedback. You'll also hear about whether she finds it lonely to write outside of an institution, and why she suggests that more historians pick up the phone and call their sources.

Note that bookshop.org links are affiliate links that generate a small commission to support the show if you purchase books using these links.

Sign up for the Drafting the Past newsletter for updates on the show and more.

Mentioned in this episode

• Emily Dufton's website
• Emily Dufton, Addiction, Inc: Medication-Assisted Treatment and America's Forgotten War on Drugs
• Emily Dufton, Grass Roots: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Marijuana in America
• J. Anthony Lukas Prize
• Robert B. Silvers Foundation Works-in-Progress grants
• Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant Pauline Kael's work at the New Yorker