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modamhist.bsky.social
Modern American History
@modamhist.bsky.social
3.4K followers 150 following 100 posts
News and insights from the journal Modern American History, devoted to all aspects of American history since the 1890s.
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modamhist.bsky.social
A new "Into the Stacks" on First View. Paige Glotzer makes the case that historians need to examine suburban history through the lens of capital, gentrification, and climate histories.

Linked below!

View of Altadena in the aftermath of the Eaton Fires, January 13, 2025. Grigory Hinton. Wikimedia Commons
January 26, 2026 at 9:45 PM
modamhist.bsky.social
On First View, A research article from Brent Campney and @tbowmanhist.bsky.social that charts growers' vigilante violence in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas to suppress farmworker activism in the 70s & their shift in 1980 to nonviolent methods associated with neocon backlash.

Linked below!
Farmworkers gather for a small rally during a 1966 march from San Juan, Texas, to the state capitol in Austin to protest their appalling working conditions. Courtesy Migrant Farm Workers Organizing Movement Collection, Special Collections, The University of Texas at Arlington Libraries, Arlington, Texas.
January 20, 2026 at 7:41 PM
modamhist.bsky.social
New on First View from 8.3!

An interview by @duke-university.bsky.social professor Adriane Lentz-Smith with one of the United States’ leading comedic journalists @roywoodjr.bsky.social on finding humor in our study of the past.

Read the full piece here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Photograph of Adriane Lentz-Smith Photo of Roy Wood Jr. Copyright to Peter Yang.
January 15, 2026 at 3:58 PM
modamhist.bsky.social
Kunzel’s most recent book, "In the Shadow of Diagnosis: Psychiatric Power and Queer Life," explores the encounter of queer and gender-variant people with psychiatry in the 20-century US.
The cover of In the Shadow of Diagnosis: Psychiatric Power and Queer Life by Regina Kunzel.
December 17, 2025 at 1:02 PM
modamhist.bsky.social
A warm welcome to our new board member!

Regina Kunzel, Larned Professor of History and Professor of Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies, at Yale is an historian of the modern US with interests in histories of gender & sexuality, queer history, history of psychiatry, and history of incarceration.
Photo of Dr. Regina Kunzel
December 17, 2025 at 1:02 PM
modamhist.bsky.social
With Alt-Text!

Would you be interested in editing an academic journal? MAH's editors will end their term in summer 2027, and CUP is looking for a new editorial team.

Interested applicants should send a CV and a brief cover letter to Chris McKeen ([email protected]). Details below.
The Executive Editors of MAH, Darren Dochuk and Sarah Snyder, will be coming to the end of their editorial term in summer 2027. CUP, in collaboration with an Editorial Board search committee, is now inviting applications for their successors, to begin a term in July 2027. The deadline for applications is September 30, 2026. Working in collaboration with an active Editorial Board, editorial responsibilities will include: -Shaping the strategic direction of the journal and defining editorial policy. -Overseeing a rigorous, constructive, supportive peer review and editorial process. -Making all final decisions on acceptance, rejection, and revisions. -Actively commissioning across a range of article types and collections. Please indicate in your application: -Your experience publishing and researching in this field. -Previous editorial experience or roles in academic administration. -The breadth and scale of your academic network. -Your historiographical vision for MAH over the next five years; including: o MAH’s identity within a rapidly developing field. o Critical themes and subject matter. -Your strategy for developing Modern American History over the next five years; including: oSupporting and attracting diversity. oOrganising and maximising the contribution of the Editorial Board. oEnsuring academic quality and scholarly impact. oEngaging with developments in scholarly communication and research practice. MAH’s editorial team can expect solid support from the Press in collaboration with the editors’ home institutions. Applicants are encouraged to include information about the potential form and extent of institutional support from their universities where available. Interested applicants should send a resume/CV and a brief cover letter detailing their qualifications and interest in the position to Chris McKeen, Associate Publisher, Cambridge University Press at chris.mckeen@cambridge.org, using “Modern American History editor search” as the subject line.
December 16, 2025 at 6:12 PM
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*Call for Applications*

Would you be interested in editing an academic journal? MAH editors Sarah Snyder and Darren Dochuk will reach the end of their term in summer 2027, and Cambridge is looking for a new editorial team.

More details below.
December 9, 2025 at 6:52 PM
modamhist.bsky.social
Congratulations to MAH editorial board member, @drashleydfarmer.bsky.social, on her new book, "Queen Mother: Black Nationalism, Reparations, and the Untold Story of Audley Moore." Read for a narrative history of 20th-century Black radicalism told through the life of one trailblazing woman.
Cover of Queen Mother: Black Nationalism, Reparations, and the Untold Story of Audley Moore. Photo of Ashley D. Farmer
November 19, 2025 at 7:26 PM
modamhist.bsky.social
Are you interested in scholarship on policing, incarcertaion, and crime? Our curated collection on the topic is a valuable resource.

Access all the pieces here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
This image points readers to the curated collection on MAH's website.
October 27, 2025 at 3:46 PM
modamhist.bsky.social
A new Q&A in 8.2: "The Indigenous Turn in Museums." Two historians and three curators reflect on their work, curatorial visions, goals for reaching wider publics through Indigenous arts, and the extent to which an “Indigenous turn” has transpired.

Read here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Gallery view, Jeffrey Gibson: the space in which to place me, Venice, Italy, 2024. Photo by Timothy Schenck. Courtesy of the Portland Art Museum.
October 10, 2025 at 4:56 PM
modamhist.bsky.social
Congratulations to the honorable mention for our third Annual Brooke L. Blower and Sarah T. Phillips Essay Prize winner: Jan Michael at @tgsatnu.bsky.social for "The Boundaries of Power: How Posse Comitatus Sought to Dismantle the U.S. State."

Look for the article in a future issue of MAH!
PhD Candidate Jan Michael
October 2, 2025 at 7:39 PM
modamhist.bsky.social
We're excited to announce the winner of the third annual Brooke L. Blower and Sarah T. Phillips Essay Prize: @syrussolojin.bsky.social at @nyu.edu with “‘Are You My Kimchi Mother?’ Race, Women, and the U.S. Military’s Study Abroad Training Program in the Early Cold War.”
Syrus Solo Jin
October 1, 2025 at 4:44 PM
modamhist.bsky.social
Our last research article from 8.2: @henrymjtonks.bsky.social looks at Lowell, MA, as an example of how deindustrialization & urban decay in the 1970s forced policymakers to focus on public-private partnerships as mechanisms of economic regeneration

Read here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Snowstorm, Lowell, Massachusetts documentary photographs, 1980s, public domain.
September 16, 2025 at 12:47 PM
modamhist.bsky.social
Molly M. Henderson, who is a VAP in Gender & Women's Studies @uwmadison.bsky.social, explores how Mobil Oil used its investments in children & families to bolstered its reputation and prevent alternate visions of economic redistribution.

Read here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
David Falconer/ U.S. National Archives
September 10, 2025 at 12:34 PM
modamhist.bsky.social
8.2 also includes "Unity and Struggle: The Twilight of Maoism in the United States" by Kazushi Minami.

Linked here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Carmelita Hinton’s radical youth delegation in Yan’an, Shaanxi Province, undated, 196-1-466, Shaanxi Provincial Archive.
September 5, 2025 at 3:55 PM
modamhist.bsky.social
Another exciting new piece of research from 8.2: "A Tale of Two Superports: Oil, Empire, and Anti-Colonial Environmentalism in Puerto Rico and Palau" by Dante LaRiccia.

Read the full article here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Sambolín’s print captured the entangled ecological and human threats of the superport, as well as the colonial valences of the project. Credit: Nelson Sambolín, Nelson Sambolín (Salinas, Puerto Rico, 1944), “Superpuerto, colonialismo, pillaje, veneno,” 1972, Taller Baja, serigrafia, Donación SKB, Colección Museo de Historia, Anthropología y Arte, Universidad de Puerto Rico, Recinto de Rio Piedras.
August 28, 2025 at 9:46 PM
modamhist.bsky.social
The latest issue includes several exciting research articles.

Our cover article is "The Specter of Waste: Incarcerated Bodies, “Healthy” Labor, and the Production of Recreational Forests" by Anaïs Lefèvre

Read here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
An incarcerated worker puts the finishing touches on a sign that reads “National Forest Campground Steamboat Falls.” The work of incarcerated men allowed forests to become recreational forests, even when they stayed inside penitentiaries. “Prisoners making campground signs,” 1945–1965, Department of Corrections, McNeil Island Corrections Center Photograph Collection, 1855–2010, Digital Archives,
August 26, 2025 at 4:16 PM
modamhist.bsky.social
An exciting Soapbox from 8.2

Historians Amanda Cobb-Greetham and Scott Manning Stevens interview curators Kathleen Ash-Milby (@portlandartmuseum.bsky.social), Jordan Poorman Cocker (Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art), and Patricia Marroquin Norby (@metmuseum.org) on the “Indigenous turn”
Installation photo, American Sunrise: Indigenous Art at Crystal Bridges, November 9, 2024-March 23, 2025. From left to right: Kelly Church, Sustaining Traditions: Basket of Resilience; Jody Naranjo, Finding Yourself; Jeri Redcorn, “Sheyahtse” Warrior; Jane Osti, A Sacred Fire; Jane Osti, The Abundance; Virgil Ortiz, Pueblo Revolt of 1680/2180,Susan Folwell, Attack of the 50 ft. Collector; Les Namingha, Geometric Interruption. Photograph by Jared Sorrells, Courtesy of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
August 23, 2025 at 4:36 PM
modamhist.bsky.social
Just dropped: issue 8.2! Linked below.
Men from the Clallam Bay Honor Camp fighting a forest fire. “Honor Camp Fighting Forest Fire,” Agenda 6, no. 3 (Jan. 1, 1961). American Prison Newspapers, 1800s-present: Voices from the Inside via Reveal Digital, JSTOR.
August 19, 2025 at 2:25 PM
modamhist.bsky.social
Up on First View!

"The Specter of Waste: Incarcerated Bodies, “Healthy” Labor, and the Production of Recreational Forests" by Anaïs Lefèvre. The piece examines how, after WWII, as they faced prison riots and rising concerns about juvenile delinquency, many states set up penal forestry camps.
An incarcerated worker puts the finishing touches on a sign that reads “National Forest Campground Steamboat Falls.” The work of incarcerated men allowed forests to become recreational forests, even when they stayed inside penitentiaries. “Prisoners making campground signs,” 1945–1965, Department of Corrections, McNeil Island Corrections Center Photograph Collection, 1855–2010, Digital Archives, https://digitalarchives.wa.gov/Record/View/E6367837C8742B57DD51AEBD89D40C73.
July 29, 2025 at 5:04 PM
modamhist.bsky.social
*New on First View*

The Honorable Mention Essay from the 2024 Brooke L. Blower and Sarah T. Phillips Prize written by Yale PhD candidate Dante LaRiccia. The article examines how Puerto Rican and Palauan activists developed novel environmental critiques and strategies to oppose them.

Link below:
The anti-superport campaign urged Palauans to vote ‘Yes’ to approve the federated Micronesian constitution in 1978. Credit: Trust Territory Photo Archives, Pacific Collection, University of Hawai‘i-Mānoa Library.
July 19, 2025 at 9:42 PM
modamhist.bsky.social
New on First View: Unity and Struggle: The Twilight of Maoism in the United States by Kazushi Minami, which follows the fragmentation of U.S. Maoism in the 1970s and the relationship between Mao’s China and its devout followers in the heartland of capitalism.

Link below!
Poster of the Mao Tsetung Memorial Meetings.
July 16, 2025 at 3:46 PM
modamhist.bsky.social
We are excited to announce the third annual Brooke L. Blower and Sarah T. Phillips Essay Prize Competition. Ph.D. candidates and early-career instructors are welcome to submit! Our deadline is June 15.
May 16, 2025 at 2:09 PM
modamhist.bsky.social
From 8.1: the cover article by Julia Guarneri, which explores women's response to attempts by advertisers to target them with specialized "women's pages."

Read the full story here" www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
The illustrated headings for “The Interests of Working Women” pictured some of the most common working-class women’s occupations: stenographer, shopgirl, and seamstress. New York World, July 5, 1896, 29; June 28, 1896, 31; July 12, 1896, 29.
May 12, 2025 at 3:53 PM
modamhist.bsky.social
Today is the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon. Candace Sobers' article, "J. William Fulbright, the Contested Legacies of the American Revolution, and the War in Vietnam" explores American responses to the Vietnam War.

Read the article here: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
01 May 1975, Doc Lap Palace, Saigon - Fall of Saigon to North Vietnam - Image by © Francoise de Mulder/CORBIS
April 30, 2025 at 3:19 PM