Heartland History

Kevin Mason - Retracing the Dragoon Trail in Iowa: Environmental Transformation Along the Des Moines River Heartland History is the official podcast of the Midwestern History Association Hosts: Josh Kluever, Kevin Mason

Jameson Sweet - Mixed-Blood Histories: Race, Law, and Dakota Indians in the Nineteenth-Century Midwest Heartland History is the official podcast of the Midwestern History Association Hosts: Josh Kluever, Kevin Mason

Sid Shroyer - When Once Destroyed: A Historical Memoir of the Life and Death of a Small Town Heartland History is the official podcast of the Midwestern History Association Hosts: Josh Kluever, Kevin Mason

Jonathan Jones - Opium Slavery: Civil War Veterans and America's First Opioid Crisis Heartland History is the official podcast of the Midwestern History Association Hosts: Josh Kluever, Kevin Mason

Katie Batza - AIDS in the Heartland How Unlikely Coalitions Created a Blueprint for LGBTQ Politics René Esparza - From Vice to Nice: Midwestern Politics and the Gentrification of AIDS Heartland History is the official podcast of the Midwestern History Association Hosts: Josh Kluever, Kevin Mason

Coreen Derifield - We Were Still Ladies: Gender and Industrial Unionism in the Midwest After World War II Heartland History is the official podcast of the Midwestern History Association Hosts: Josh Kluever, Kevin Mason

Daniel Clark - Listening to Workers: Oral Histories of Metro Detroit Autoworkers in the 1950s Heartland History is the official podcast of the Midwestern History Association Hosts: Josh Kluever, Kevin Mason

Thomas M. Nelson, Jerald Podair - Wrecked: The Edmund Fitzgerald and the Sinking of the American Economy Heartland History is the official podcast of the Midwestern History Association Hosts: Josh Kluever, Kevin Mason

David Hakensen - Her Place in the Woods: The Life of Helen Hoover Heartland History is the official podcast of the Midwestern History Association Hosts: Josh Kluever, Kevin Mason Hosts Emeritus: Camden Burd, Ramya Swayamprakash, Jon Lauck

Tim Mulherin-This Magnetic North: Candid Conversations on a changing Northern Michigan by Midwestern History Association

Erik S. McDuffie - The Second Battle for Africa: Garveyism, the US Heartland, and Global Freedom by Midwestern History Association

Willa Hammit Brown - Gentlemen of the Woods: Manhood, Myth, and the American Lumberjack by Midwestern History Association

Josh Nygren - The State of Conservation: Rural America and the Conservation-Industrial Complex since 1920 by Midwestern History Association

Stephanie Ternullo discusses her new book, How the Heartland Went Red: Why Local Forces Matter in an Age of Nationalized Politics (Princeton University Press, 2024).

A group of scholars discuss the history and future of Midwestern History.

Paul Renfro discusses his new book, The Life and Death of Ryan White: AIDS and Inequality in America (UNC Press, 2024).

Casey Huegel discusses his book, Cleaning Up the Bomb Factory: Grassroots Activism and Nuclear Waste in the Midwest

Dr. Carolina Ortega leads a discussion on Dr. Sergio Gonzalez's book, Stangers No Longer: Latino Belonging and Faith in Twentieth-Century Wisconsin, published by the University of Illinois Press.

Dr. Pamela Riney-Kehrberg discusses her new book, When a Dream Dies: Agriculture, Iowa, and the Farm Crisis of the 1980s.

Dr. Josiah Rector joins the podcast to talk about his recent book, Toxic Debt: An Environmental Justice History of Detroit.

Steven Conn discusses his new book, Lies of the Land: Seeing Rural America for What It Is - and Isn't.

Max Fraser discussers migration, labor, and culture in the Midwest by examining the experiences of migrant white workers in the region. The full book, Hillbilly Highway: The Transappalachian Migration and the Making of a White Working Class, can be purchased at the Princeton University Press website, https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691191119/hillbilly-highway.

Crystal Marie Moten - Continually Working by Midwestern History Association

John Nelson - Muddy Ground: Native Peoples, Chicago's Portage, and the Transformation of a Continent by Midwestern History Association

Dr. Melissa Ford joins us to discuss her new book A Brick and a Bible: Black Women's Activism in the Midwest During the Great Depression, published by Southern Illinois University Press.

Ashley Howard - What to the "Other" is the Midwest? by Midwestern History Association

Jon Lauck discussed his most recent book, The Good Country: A History of the American Midwest, 1800-1900.

Dr. Alonzo Ward is an assistant professor of history at Eastern Illinois University. He focuses on African American history in the Midwest during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as the general history of race and ethnicity in the United States. Specifically, he researches African American labor history in Illinois in conjunction with the larger labor movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We are talking to him about his recent article “‘A Revolution in Labor:’ African Americans and Hybrid Labor Activism in Illinois during the Early Jim Crow Era,” which was recently published in the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society.

Writer Steven Moore discusses his recent collection essays, The Distance from Slaughter County: Lessons from Flyover Country, recently published at the University of North Carolina Press.

Dr. Christopher Ali is the Pioneers Chair in Telecommunications and Professor of Telecommunications in the Bellisario College of Communications at Penn State. His research interests include media and telecommunications policy and regulation, broadband policy, critical political economy, critical geography, comparative media systems, qualitative research methods, media localism and local news. In this episode Dr. Ali discusses his book Farm Fresh Broadband: The Politics of Rural Connectivity (MIT Press, 2021).

Dr. Fernández-Jones discusses her research which appeared in an edited collection titled, Building Sustainable Worlds: Latinx Placemaking in the Midwest. She also discusses her forthcoming book, Making the MexiRican City: Migration, Placemaking, and Activism in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Both projects were published by University of Illinois Press.

Dr. Kai Bosworth discusses his book, Pipeline Populism: Grassroots Environmentalism in the Twenty-First Century which was recently published by the University of Minnesota Press.

Dr. Sasha Maria Suarez, an assistant professor of history at UW-Madison talks about her latest essay "Indigenizing Minneapolis: Building American Indian Community Infrastructure in the Mid-Twentieth Century,” which appears in Indian Cities: Histories of Indigenous Urbanism, published by the University of Oklahoma Press. From the publisher: "From ancient metropolises like Pueblo Bonito and Tenochtitlán to the twenty-first century Oceti Sakowin encampment of NoDAPL water protectors, Native people have built and lived in cities—a fact little noted in either urban or Indigenous histories. By foregrounding Indigenous peoples as city makers and city dwellers, as agents and subjects of urbanization, the essays in this volume simultaneously highlight the impact of Indigenous people on urban places and the effects of urbanism on Indigenous people and politics. The authors—Native and non-Native, anthropologists and geographers as well as historians—use the term “Indian cities” to represent collective urban spaces established and regulated by a range of institutions, organizations, churches, and businesses. These urban institutions have strengthened tribal and intertribal identities, creating new forms of shared experience and giving rise to new practices of Indigeneity. Some of the essays in this volume explore Native participation in everyday economic activities, whether in the commerce of colonial Charleston or in the early development of New Orleans. Others show how Native Americans became entwined in the symbolism associated with Niagara Falls and Washington, D.C., with dramatically different consequences for Native and non-Native perspectives. Still others describe the roles local Indigenous community groups have played in building urban Native American communities, from Dallas to Winnipeg. All the contributions to this volume show how, from colonial times to the present day, Indigenous people have shaped and been shaped by urban spaces. Collectively they demonstrate that urban history and Indigenous history are incomplete without each other." https://www.oupress.com/9780806176635/indian-cities/

Camden joins Drs. Andrew Klumpp, Pamela-Riney Kehrberg, and Rebecca Conard for a wide-ranging conversation about regionalism, state and local history, and a recent issue of The Annals of Iowa. If you are interested in learning more about The Annals of Iowa, previous issues are available here: https://pubs.lib.uiowa.edu/annals-of-iowa/issues/

Camden and Phil have a wide-ranging conversation about the Midwest as a place and as an idea, focusing particuarly on Phil's lastest book Midwest Futures available from Belt Publishing (https://beltpublishing.com/products/midwest-futures). From the Publisher: The Midwest: Is it middle? Or is it Western? As Phil Christman writes in this idiosyncratic, critically acclaimed essay collection, these and other ambiguities might well be the region's defining characteristic. Deftly combining history, criticism, and memoir, Christman breaks his exploration of midwestern identity, past and present, into a suite of thirty-six brief, interconnected essays. Ranging across material questions of religion, race, class, climate, and Midwestern myth making, the result is a sometimes sardonic, often uproarious, and consistently thought-provoking look at a misunderstood place and the people who call it home.

Camden and Dr. Benjamin Park discuss Dr. Park's book "Kingdom of Nauvoo: The Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier." From the Publisher: In Kingdom of Nauvoo, Benjamin E. Park draws on newly available sources to re-create the founding and destruction of the Mormon city of Nauvoo. On the banks of the Mississippi in Illinois, the early Mormons built a religious utopia, establishing their own army and writing their own constitution. For those offenses and others—including the introduction of polygamy, which was bitterly opposed by Emma Smith, the iron-willed first wife of Joseph Smith—the surrounding population violently ejected the Mormons, sending them on their flight to Utah. Throughout his absorbing chronicle, Park shows how the Mormons of Nauvoo were representative of their era, and in doing so elevates Mormon history into the American mainstream. https://wwnorton.com/books/9781631494864

Guest, Dr. Brandon Ward who is the author of the recent study "Living Detroit Environmental Activism in an Age of Urban Crisis" (Routledge 2021) has a wide-ranging conversation with Camden about the ways environmental concerns were inseparable from issues related to housing, civil rights, suburbanization, organized labor, and deindustrialization in Detroit. Dr. Ward also draws attention to the opportunities that greater awareness of this legacy in contemporary political discourse creates for Detroiters. From the publisher: In Living Detroit, Brandon M. Ward argues that environmentalism in postwar Detroit responded to anxieties over the urban crisis, deindustrialization, and the fate of the city. Tying the diverse stories of environmental activism and politics together is the shared assumption environmental activism could improve their quality of life. Detroit, Michigan, was once the capital of industrial prosperity and the beacon of the American Dream. It has since endured decades of deindustrialization, population loss, and physical decay – in short, it has become the poster child for the urban crisis. This is not a place in which one would expect to discover a history of vibrant expressions of environmentalism; however, in the post-World War II era, while suburban, middle-class homeowners organized into a potent force to protect the natural settings of their communities, in the working-class industrial cities and in the inner city, Detroiters were equally driven by the impulse to conserve their neighborhoods and create a more livable city, pushing back against the forces of deindustrialization and urban crisis. Living Detroit juxtaposes two vibrant and growing fields of American history which often talk past each other: environmentalism and the urban crisis. By putting the two subjects into conversation, we gain a richer understanding of the development of environmental activism and politics after World War II and its relationship to the crisis of America’s cities. https://www.routledge.com/Living-Detroit-Environmental-Activism-in-an-Age-of-Urban-Crisis/Ward/p/book/9780367334420

This episode, Camden sits down with Edward E. Curtis IV who is the William M. and Gail M. Plater Chair of Liberal Arts & Professor of Religious Studies at IUPUI. Dr. Curtis discusses his most recent book, Muslims of the Heartland: How Syrian Immigrants Made a Home in the American Midwest (New York University Press). From the publisher: "The American Midwest is often thought of as uniformly white, and shaped exclusively by Christian values. However, this view of the region as an unvarying landscape fails to consider a significant community at its very heart. Muslims of the Heartland uncovers the long history of Muslims in a part of the country where many readers would not expect to find them. Edward E. Curtis IV, a descendant of Syrian Midwesterners, vividly portrays the intrepid men and women who busted sod on the short-grass prairies of the Dakotas, peddled needles and lace on the streets of Cedar Rapids, and worked in the railroad car factories of Michigan City. This intimate portrait follows the stories of individuals such as farmer Mary Juma, pacifist Kassem Rameden, poet Aliya Hassen, and bookmaker Kamel Osman from the early 1900s through World War I, the Roaring 20s, the Great Depression, and World War II. Its story-driven approach places Syrian Americans at the center of key American institutions like the assembly line, the family farm, the dance hall, and the public school, showing how the first two generations of Midwestern Syrians created a life that was Arab, Muslim, and American, all at the same time. Muslims of the Heartland recreates what the Syrian Muslim Midwest looked, sounded, felt, and smelled like—from the allspice-seasoned lamb and rice shared in mosque basements to the sound of the trains on the Rock Island Line rolling past the dry goods store. It recovers a multicultural history of the American Midwest that cannot be ignored." https://nyupress.org/9781479812561/muslims-of-the-heartland/

On this edition of Heartland History, Camden is joined by Dr. Molly Rozum of the University of South Dakota to discuss her new book Grasslands Grown: Creating Place on the U.S. Northern Plains and Canadian Prairies. From the University of Nebraska Press: "In Grasslands Grown Molly P. Rozum explores the two related concepts of regional identity and sense of place by examining a single North American ecological region: the U.S. Great Plains and the Canadian Prairie Provinces. All or parts of modern-day Alberta, Montana, Saskatchewan, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Manitoba form the center of this transnational region. As children, the first postconquest generation of northern grasslands residents worked, played, and traveled with domestic and wild animals, which introduced them to ecology and shaped sense-of-place rhythms. As adults, members of this generation of settler society worked to adapt to the northern grasslands by practicing both agricultural diversification and environmental conservation. Rozum argues that environmental awareness, including its ecological and cultural aspects, is key to forming a sense of place and a regional identity. The two concepts overlap and reinforce each other: place is more local, ecological, and emotional-sensual, and region is more ideational, national, and geographic in tone. This captivating study examines the growth of place and regional identities as they took shape within generations and over the life cycle." You can find Dr. Rozum's book here, https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9780803285767/ or through independent book sellers.

This episode, Camden sits down with Dr. Lynne Heasley, Professor of Environment and Sustainability at WMU to discuss her new book "The Accidental Reef and Other Ecological Odysseys in the Great Lakes" (2021). Dr. Heasley's book is available through Michigan State University Press https://msupress.org/9781611864076/the-accidental-reef-and-other-ecological-odysseys-in-the-great-lakes/ or your local independent bookseller.

In this episode, Camden has a conversation with Professor Kristy Nabhan-Warren, who is the V.O. and Elizabeth Kahl Figge Chair in Catholic Studies Departments of Religious Studies and Gender, Women's and Sexuality Studies at the University of Iowa, about her latest published research, "Meat Packing America: How Migration, Work, and Faith Unite and Divide the Heartland" (2021). The book is available directly from UNC Press (https://uncpress.org/book/9781469663494/meatpacking-america/) or from your local bookseller.

Heartland History is back! We are thrilled to host a conversation with guest Dr. Dana Caldemeyer, Associate Professor of History at South Georgia State College. Dr. Caldemeyer talks with our new host Dr. Camden Burd about her new book "Union Renegades: Miners, Capitalism, and Organizing in the Gilded Age" (2021)published by the University of Illinois Press. Their conversation covers the tangled relationship of miners in the Midwest to labor organizations and to the corporate entities that employed them. If you are interested in Dr. Caldemeyer's book, follow this link or order a copy from your local independent bookseller: https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/39dem6cr9780252043505.html

Jillian Marie Jacklin of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of History interviews Sergio González who is the Assistant Professor of Latinx Studies in the Departments of History and of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at Marquette University. Jacklin and González discuss his 2017 book "Mexicans in Wisconsin" published by the Wisconsin Historical Society, the vital importance of studying the past and present patterns of immigration in the Midwest (particularly in Milwaukee), as well as the political components of research on immigrant communities and citizenship in the contemporary cultural moment. In addition to his 2017 book and his teaching, Dr. González serves on the editorial board of "Wisconsin 101: Our History in Objects" and is working on “Building Sustainable Worlds: Latinx Placemaking in the Midwest,” an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation/Humanities Without Walls consortium-funded project. Jillian Jacklin studies labor and working-class history with an emphasis on U.S. social movements and political activism. Her research and teaching interests include cultural and carceral studies, critical race theory, economic and industrial relations, gender studies, and the history of American capitalism. She has published work in the Journal of Folklore Research and has two articles forthcoming in the International Journal of Cuban Studies.

Guest contributor Professor Katie Day Good of Miami University in Oxford, Ohio interviews Professor Kathryn Remlinger, author of Yooper Talk: Dialect as Identity in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, published by the University of Wisconsin Press (2017). Professor Remlinger — in addition to helpfully explaining what a “Yooper” is! — discusses her work with linguistic identity in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the methodology behind her research, the history of settlement in the region, the immigrant populations that shaped the region economically, culturally, and linguistically, and the varieties of English dialects that emerged in the region.

For the 40th episode of the podcast, Jon talks with Liesl Olson about her new book published by Yale University Press, titled "Chicago Renaissance: Literature and Art in the Midwest Metropolis" (2017). Olson is the Director of Chicago Studies at the Newberry library and has taught at the University of Chicago, received fellowships from the National Endowment the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Newberry Library. Olson's first book Modernism and the Ordinary was published by Oxford University Press in 2009.

Jon interviews Steve Paul, a former Kansas City Star reporter and the author of “Hemingway at Eighteen: The Pivotal Year That Launched an American Legend,” published this month by Chicago Review Press. Paul discusses his work researching Hemingway, learning more about his connections to the Kansas City Star, and the importance of the Midwest to Hemingway’s identity and writing. Steve Paul will be speaking about “Hemingway at Eighteen” at the Iowa City Book Festival on at 2:30 PM on Saturday October 14th at the Iowa City Public Library.

Jon talks with author Melissa Fraterrigo, whose latest book titled "Glory Days" was published by the University of Nebraska Press in September of 2017. In the interview, Fraterrigo discusses growing up (and later living) all across the Midwest, how she became an author, and her love of teaching writing and literature as the current Director and as the Founder of the Lafayette Writers' Studio in Lafayette, Indiana.

One day away from Heartland History's one year anniversary, Jon talks about the background of the Iowa City Book Fair with John Kenyon, the Director of the Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature. They also discuss the festival this year, the literary past and present of Iowa City, and the importance of Iowa's designation as only one of twenty UNESCO Cities of Literature globally. The Iowa City Book Festival runs from October 8th-15th.

Dr. Mark Soderstrom of SUNY Empire State College discusses his dissertation work on race, segregation, and housing at the University of Minnesota in the early 20th century, as well as an exhibit based on his research at the University of Minnesota's Elmer L. Andersen Library Atrium Gallery entitled "A Campus Divided: Progressives, Anti-Communists, Racism, and Anti-Semitism at the University of Minnesota, 1930-1942." The exhibit runs through November 30th of this year.

Tricia Oman, professor at Hastings College and director of Hastings College Press discusses growing up in the Midwest, discovering its literary heritage and prominence in the early 20th century, studying the growing cultural invisibility of Midwestern culture in latter half of the 20th century, the ways in which the Midwest has been defined popularly as “flyover country” by outsiders as to the region, and the nostalgia surrounding the Midwestern small town. Dr. Oman also talks about her work for the press rediscovering Midwestern texts, the press’s new series "Rediscovering the American Midwest," and a new book The Midwestern Moment (2017).