Episode 66: April Masten Explores History Through Song and Dance

Welcome back to Yeah, I Got a F#%*ing Job With a Liberal Arts Degree, a show that takes a deep look at the humanities and higher education more generally. Join professor of history and humanities Dean Jeff Crane as he interviews a range of guests about the value of the liberal arts and education as a personal and public good. Our guest for this episode is Dr. April Masten who is a Professor of American History at Stony Brook University, where she teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on the Early Republic, antebellum, and Civil War eras, early industrialization, art as labor, women, and popular culture. Her first book, Art Work: Women Artists and Democracy in Mid-Nineteenth-Century New York explores the surprisingly egalitarian cultural landscape of 1850 through 1880 in which thousands of young women, aided by the Ruskinian “Unity of Art” ideal and radical artisan reformers and philanthropists, managed to study the visual arts at New York’s Cooper Union and become professional artists, albeit in an emerging industrial society that extolled masculine genius and exploited women’s labor in all realms. And she has a new book that just came out in late 2025 called Diamond and Juba: The Raucous World of 19th-Century Challenge Dancing. This work recovers the careers of two celebrated jig dancers, Irish American John Diamond and African American William Henry Lane (known as Juba), as they competed for high stakes and championship belts in the taverns, circuses, and theaters of antebellum America. Their extraordinary stage rivalry unfolded amid a rising tide of nativism and negrophobia that drove them closer even as it divided the nation. Out of this cauldron came a “purely American” dance and sport – challenge dancing, which continues to flourish, inspire, and unite young people around the world.Please subscribe to the show, share , rate and review! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Music by Silverman Sound Studios⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Yeah, I Got an F#%*ing Job with a Liberal Arts Degree is produced by Abigail Smithson. You can email the us with any questions @ [email protected] show is created and supported by the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at Cal Poly Humboldt and is recorded on campus in beautiful Arcata, California.Works Cited:Not So Much to Want by April Masten (LP)Professor Herbert Gutman