Episodes

  • Michelle Chase and Isabella Cosse eds., "The Cuban Revolution and the New Left: Transnational Histories of Gender, Sexuality, and Family" (U Florida Press, 2026)

    Michelle Chase and Isabella Cosse eds., "The Cuban Revolution and the New Left: Transnational Histories of Gender, Sexuality, and Family" (U Florida Press, 2026)
    Jun 25 2026
    Understanding overlooked dimensions of the Cuban Revolution and its impact on the global left in the 1960s and beyond. This volume, The Cuban Revolution and the New Left: Transnational Histories of Gender, Sexuality, and Family (University of Florida Press, 2026) reconsiders revolutionary Cuba's global influence by shifting the focus from high-level political leaders to perspectives traditionally sidelined, offering new insights into how everyday lives, family dynamics, and notions of gender and sexuality impacted revolutionary transformation. Its expansive scope uncovers ties between Cuba and Latin America, the United States, Africa, and Asia, examining the interplay of global forces including new models of mass consumption, feminist and LGBTQ+ movements, and national liberation struggles. Chapters include analyses of Chinese reinterpretations of a Cuban play, Angela Davis's influential visits to the island, Cuba's complex relations with Black militants in Angola, and a Mexican transgender and disability activist who reimagined Che Guevara's legacy. They also present research on Cuba's solidarity campaigns with Vietnam, foreign journalists who covered the revolution, the role of consumption and fashion, and the lasting impact of the revolution's refugee policies on exiled children and families from the Southern Cone. Through its interdisciplinary sociocultural approach, this volume challenges conventional top-down narratives by foregrounding the interplay between grassroots actors and transnational affairs. It is an essential resource for scholars, students, and anyone interested in the multilayered stages of the Cuban Revolution and its continued relationship with global politics and culture. A volume in the series Caribbean Crossroads: Race, Identity, and Freedom Struggles, edited by Lillian Guerra, Devyn Spence Benson, April Mayes, and Solsiree del Moral Publication of this work made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Contributors: Tanya Harmer | Emily Snyder | Felipe CesarCamilo Caro Romero | Ailynn Torres Santana | Robert Franco | MichelleChase | Isabella Cosse | Siwei Wang | Ximena Espeche | Sarah J. Seidman | Rafael Cesar | Alexis Baldacci Michelle Chase is an associate professor of history at Pace University. Isabella Cosse is a professor of history at Universidad Nacional de San Martín and researcher at Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET) Katie L. Coldiron is a librarian and doctoral candidate in history at Florida International University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    42 mins
  • Michael T. Bertrand, "Southern History Remixed: On Rock 'n' Roll and the Dilemma of Race" (UP Florida, 2024)

    Michael T. Bertrand, "Southern History Remixed: On Rock 'n' Roll and the Dilemma of Race" (UP Florida, 2024)
    Oct 17 2025
    Southern History Remixed: On Rock ‘n’ Roll and the Dilemma of Race (UP Florida, 2024) spotlights the key role of popular music in the shaping of the United States South from the late nineteenth century to the era of rock ’n’ roll in the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s. While musical activities are often sidelined in historical narratives of the region, Michael Bertrand shows that they can reveal much about social history and culture change as he connects the rise of rock ’n’ roll to the civil rights movement for racial equality. In this book, Bertrand traces a long-term culture war in which white southerners struggled over the region’s cultural complexion with music serving as an engine that both sustained and challenged white supremacy. He shows how rock ’n’ roll emerged as a working-class genre with biracial sources that stoked white racial anxieties and engaged the region’s color and culture lines. This book discusses the conflict over southern identity that played out in responses to jazz, barn dance radio, Pentecostal and gospel music, Black radio programming, and rhythm and blues, concluding with a close look at the popularity of Elvis Presley within a racially segregated society. Southern History Remixed suggests that both Black and white southerners have used music as a tool to resist or negotiate a rigid regional hierarchy. Urging readers and scholars to take the study of popular music seriously, Bertrand argues that what occurs in the music world affects and reflects what happens in politics and history. Guest: Michael T. Bertrand is a historian of the American South and the modern United States. Host: Caroline Alt (she/her), a Ph.D. student in the Department of History at the University of Georgia. She studies the hauntings of the American South from the 19th through the 21st centuries. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 4 mins
  • Beverly Tomek and Matthew J. Hetrick, "New Directions in the Study of African American Recolonization" (UP of Florida, 2017)

    Beverly Tomek and Matthew J. Hetrick, "New Directions in the Study of African American Recolonization" (UP of Florida, 2017)
    Apr 29 2025
    New Directions in the Study of African American Recolonization (UP of Florida, 2017) examines the movement to resettle black Americans in Africa, an effort led by the American Colonization Society during the nineteenth century and a heavily debated part of American history. Some believe it was inspired by antislavery principles, but others think it was a proslavery reaction against the presence of free Black people in society. Moving beyond this simplistic debate, contributors link the movement to other historical developments of the time, revealing a complex web of different schemes, ideologies, and activities behind the relocation of African Americans to Liberia. They explain what colonization, emigration, immigration, abolition, and emancipation meant within nuanced nineteenth-century contexts, looking through many lenses to more accurately reflect the past. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    52 mins
  • Reginald K. Ellis et al., "Black Citizens and American Democracy: Fighting for the Soul of a Nation" (UP of Florida, 2025)

    Reginald K. Ellis et al., "Black Citizens and American Democracy: Fighting for the Soul of a Nation" (UP of Florida, 2025)
    Apr 29 2025
    In 2020, Black Americans continued a centuries-long pursuit of racial equality and justice in the streets and at the polls. Arguing that this year was not a deviation from the historic Civil Rights Movement, the contributors to this collection examine the important work of Black men and women during the previous decades to shape, expand, and preserve a multiracial American democracy. The authors of these chapters show that Black Americans have long pushed local and national leaders to ensure that all citizens reap the full benefits of the Constitution. They discuss Black women's roles in advancing national voting rights; how Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) developed "race leaders"; discriminatory news coverage and actions against it; antipoverty efforts; and the racial and gender dynamics of activist organizations. These studies show how Black activism from the mid-twentieth century to the present has led to positive changes for all Americans, holding the nation to its democratic ideals and promises. Black Citizens and American Democracy (UP of Florida, 2025) compels recognition of many unsung people who have risked their lives and livelihoods for the good of the country. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    28 mins
  • Nicolas Delsol, "Cattle in the Postcolumbian Americas: A Zooarchaeological Historical Study" (UP of Florida, 2024)

    Nicolas Delsol, "Cattle in the Postcolumbian Americas: A Zooarchaeological Historical Study" (UP of Florida, 2024)
    Oct 28 2024
    In Cattle in the Postcolumbian Americas: A Zooarchaeological Historical Study (University Press of Florida, 2024), Nicolas Delsol compares zooarchaeological and material evidence from sites across Mesoamerica and the Caribbean to show how the introduction of cattle, beginning with imports by Spanish colonizers in the 1500s, shaped colonial American society. Before European colonization, cows were vital in European and African societies but were unknown to the Native communities of the Western Hemisphere. This book traces their impact in the Americas by using a broad range of methods, such as ancient DNA analyses on faunal collections from major postcolumbian sites. Delsol describes the place of cattle in the colonial culture and landscape, beginning with the transportation of cattle across the Atlantic and moving to herding practices in new habitats, butchery techniques, and the production, trading, and use of cow byproducts. Cattle in the Postcolumbian Americas is the first large-scale regional archaeological study of the introduction of a European domesticated species to the Americas. Using both zooarchaeological and historical data, Delsol argues that the arrival of cattle was a major consequence of European colonization with effects that have often been overlooked. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    58 mins
  • Christina M. García, "Corporeal Readings of Cuban Literature and Art: The Body, the Inhuman, and Ecological Thinking" (U Florida Press, 2024)

    Christina M. García, "Corporeal Readings of Cuban Literature and Art: The Body, the Inhuman, and Ecological Thinking" (U Florida Press, 2024)
    Jun 28 2024
    Christina M. García’s book, Corporeal Readings of Cuban Literature and Art: The Body, the Inhuman, and Ecological Thinking (University Press of Florida, 2024), looks at Cuban literature and art that challenge traditional assumptions about the body. García examines how writers and artists have depicted racial, gender, and species differences throughout the past century - specifically, how these works interact with ecologies of the human and nonhuman across diverse media, time periods, and ideologies. To answer these questions, García uses the lenses of new materialism, critical race studies, critical animal studies, queer studies, and poststructuralism and identifies historical continuities in the way they have emphasized the shared materiality of bodies. Corporeal Readings of Cuban Literature and Art demonstrates that through their attention to the connections that different kinds of bodies share, Cuban creators have long undermined rules of classification and unification, reimagining community as shared vulnerability and difference. Christina M. García is assistant professor of Spanish at the College of Charleston. Tatiana Klepikova is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Regensburg, where she leads a research group on queer literatures and cultures under socialism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 7 mins
  • Pablo Alonso González, "Cuban Cultural Heritage: A Rebel Past for a Revolutionary Nation" (UP of Florida, 2018)

    Pablo Alonso González, "Cuban Cultural Heritage: A Rebel Past for a Revolutionary Nation" (UP of Florida, 2018)
    Feb 16 2024
    Cuban Cultural Heritage: A Rebel Past for a Revolutionary Nation (UP of Florida, 2018) explores the role that cultural heritage and museums played in the construction of a national identity in postcolonial Cuba. Starting with independence from Spain in 1898 and moving through Cuban-American rapprochement in 2014, Pablo Alonso González illustrates how political and ideological shifts have influenced ideas about heritage and how, in turn, heritage has been used by different social actors to reiterate their status, spread new ideologies, and consolidate political regimes. Unveiling the connections between heritage, power, and ideology, Alonso González delves into the intricacies of Cuban history, covering key issues such as Cuba's cultural and political relationships with Spain, the United States, the Soviet Union, and so-called Third World countries; the complexities of Cuba's status as a postcolonial state; and the potential future paths of the Revolution in the years to come. This volume offers a detailed look at the function and place of cultural heritage under socialist states. Pablo Alonso González is a Senior Researcher at the Spanish National Research Council (IPNA-CSIC). He is the author of several books, including Cultural Parks and National Heritage Areas: Assembling Cultural Heritage, Development and Spatial Planning. Katie Coldiron is the Outreach Program Manager for the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) and PhD student in History at Florida International University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    47 mins
  • Christopher P. Barton, "The Archaeology of Race and Class at Timbuctoo: A Black Community in New Jersey" (UP of Florida, 2023)

    Christopher P. Barton, "The Archaeology of Race and Class at Timbuctoo: A Black Community in New Jersey" (UP of Florida, 2023)
    Oct 25 2023
    The Archaeology of Race and Class at Timbuctoo: A Black Community in New Jersey (UP of Florida, 2023) is the first book to examine the historic Black community of Timbuctoo, New Jersey, which was founded in 1826 by formerly enslaved migrants from Maryland and served as a stop on the Underground Railroad. In collaboration with descendants and community members, Christopher Barton explores the intersectionality of life at Timbuctoo and the ways Black residents resisted the marginalizing structures of race and class. Despite some support from local Quaker abolitionists, the people of Timbuctoo endured strained relationships with neighboring white communities, clashes with slave catchers, and hostilities from the Ku Klux Klan. Through a multiscalar approach that ranges from landscape archaeology and settlement patterns to analysis of consumer artifacts, this book demonstrates how residents persevered to construct their own identities and navigate poverty. Barton incorporates oral histories from community elders that offer insights into the racial tensions of the early- to mid-twentieth century and convey the strong, lasting character of the community in the face of repression. Weaving together memories and inherited accounts, current archaeological investigations, historical records, and comparisons to nearby Black-established communities of the era, this book illuminates the everyday impacts of slavery and race relations in a part of the country that seemed to promise freedom and highlights the use of archaeology as a medium for social activism. Christopher P. Barton, associate professor of archaeology at Francis Marion University, is the editor of Trowels in the Trenches: Archaeology as Social Activism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    42 mins