New Books in Native American Studies

Mar 09 2025 447 ep. 58 mins 1.4k
New Books in Native American Studies Podcast artwork

Interviews with Scholars of Native America about their New Books

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/native-american-studies

  Society & Culture  History
RSS feed Share
Copy RSS


Subscribe on Podcast Addict


Andrew C. Isenberg, "The Age of the Borderlands: Indians, Slaves, and the Limits of Manifest Destiny, 1790-1850" (UNC Press, 2025)

Mar 09 2025 67 mins  
Most US history textbooks contain a familiar map: shaded colors stretch across North America, clearly and neatly demarcating the extent of US expansion from 1776 thru the late nineteenth century. In The Age of the Borderlands: Indians, Slaves, and the Limites of Manifest Destiny (UNC Press, 2025), University of Kansas distinguished historian Andrew Isenberg asks us to rethink the c

Benjamin Heber Johnson, "Texas: An American History" (Yale UP, 2025)

Feb 23 2025 70 mins  
There's more to Texas than hats, oil, and BBQ, writes Benjamin Johnson in his sweeping new synthesis, Texas: An American History (Yale UP: 2025) - though, those all matter too. The state's reach has traveled globally, Johnson argues, influencing everything from how people around the world eat, to how they pray, to the music they listen to. In his new book, Johnson describes the lon

Stephanie M. Pridgeon, "Absorption Narratives: Jewishness, Blackness, and Indigeneity in the Cultural Imaginary of the Americas" (U Toronto Press, 2025)

Feb 19 2025 57 mins  
In Absorption Narratives: Jewishness, Blackness, and Indigeneity in the Cultural Imaginary of the Americas (U Toronto Press, 2025), Stephanie M. Pridgeon explores cultural depictions of Jewishness, Blackness, and Indigeneity within a comparative, inter-American framework. The dynamics of Jewishness interacting with other racial categories differ significantly in Latin America and t

Magnus Course, "Three Ways to Fail: Journeys Through Mapuche Chile" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)

Feb 13 2025 76 mins  
An ethnographic exploration of anthropological failures through the Mapuche archetypes of witch, clown, and usurper, Three Ways to Fail: Journeys Through Mapuche Chile (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024) invites readers to consider concepts of failure, knowing, and being in the world within a rural Mapuche community. How do we learn what failure looks like? During the years anthropologist

Edward Westermann, "Hitler's Ostkrieg and the Indian Wars: Comparing Genocide and Conquest" (U Oklahoma Press, 2016)

Jan 29 2025 97 mins  
As he prepared to wage his war of annihilation on the Eastern Front, Adolf Hitler repeatedly drew parallels between the Nazi quest for Lebensraum, or living space, in Eastern Europe and the United States's westward expansion under the banner of Manifest Destiny. The peoples of Eastern Europe were, he said, his "redskins," and for his colonial fantasy of a "German East" he claimed a

Kathleen Lippa, "Arctic Predator: The Crimes of Edward Horne Against Children in Canada's North" (Dundurn, 2025)

Jan 20 2025 61 mins  
After years of research, journalist Kathleen Lippa has written about the shocking crimes of a trusted teacher who wrought lasting damage on Inuit communities: Arctic Predator: The Crimes of Edward Horne Against Children in Canada’s North (Dundurn Press, February 2025). In the 1970s, a young schoolteacher from British Columbia was becoming the darling of the Northwest Territories

Andrew Laird, "Aztec Latin: Renaissance Learning and Nahuatl Traditions in Early Colonial Mexico" (Oxford UP, 2024)

Jan 18 2025 43 mins  
Andrew Laird, of Brown University, discusses Aztec Latin: Renaissance Learning and Nahuatl Traditions in Early Colonial Mexico (Oxford University Press, 2024). In 1536, only fifteen years after the fall of the Aztec empire, Franciscan missionaries began teaching Latin, classical rhetoric, and Aristotelian philosophy to native youths in central Mexico. The remarkable linguistic and

Victor M. Valle, "The Poetics of Fire: Metaphors of Chile Eating in the Borderlands" (U New Mexico Press, 2023)

Jan 17 2025 81 mins  
Chile is more than just spice, writes Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and Cal Poly Ethnic Studies professor Victor Valle in The Poetics of Fire: Metaphors of Chile Eating in the Borderlands (U New Mexico Press, 2023). By tracing the meaning of chile as a plant and chile eating as an act. Valle shows how Indigenous cultivation and culinary practices troubled colonizers, sustained

Susan A. Brewer, "The Best Land: Four Hundred Years of Love and Betrayal on Oneida Territory" (Three Hills, 2024)

Jan 12 2025 59 mins  
In Dr. Susan A. Brewer's fascinating The Best Land: Four Hundred Years of Love and Betrayal on Oneida Territory (Cornell University Press, 2024), she recounts the story of the parcel of central New York land on which she grew up. Brewer and her family had worked and lived on this land for generations when the Oneida Indians claimed that it rightfully belonged to them. Why, she wond

Robert Wright, "Indigenous Autonomy at La Junta de Los Rios: Traders, Allies, and Migrants on New Spain's Northern Frontier" (Texas Tech UP, 2023)

Jan 12 2025 51 mins  
Today I talked to Robert Wright about Indigenous Autonomy at La Junta de Los Rios: Traders, Allies, and Migrants on New Spain's Northern Frontier (Texas Tech UP, 2023). The Indigenous nations of the valley of the Rio Grande that is now centered upon Ojinaga, Chihuahua, and Presidio, Texas―the La Junta valley in colonial times―had a long and unique history with Hispanics during