This special panel debrief edition of the Journal of American History Podcast features a conversation on "Sovereignties in the Atlantic World: Black and Indigenous Intersections," held at the 2024 OAH Conference on American History.

Historians of Indigenous peoples and historians of the African diaspora do not engage with each other often enough. Both sets of specialists generally presume that their fields operate by distinctive, and possibly incommensurate, analytics. Historians of Native America stress the importance of sovereignty, which underscores the nationhood of Indigenous peoples. The obvious counterpoint to sovereignty is subjection: conquest and the ways that sovereignty persists within colonization. By contrast, historians of the African diaspora have stressed a different dyad of slavery and freedom. Rooted in the transatlantic slave trade, the plantation complex, and the racialization of labor relations, these scholars center the violence of racial bondage and probe the ways that enslaved people sought liberation in ways small and large. In this episode, Miguel A. Valerio, Matthew Kruer, Hayley Negrín, Shavagne Scott, and Alycia Hall challenge the assumption that these frameworks are incommensurate and argue that both fields have much to gain through conversation. They proceed from the basic question: what happens when we think of slavery and sovereignty as two sides of the same conceptual coin?

Read more about the session here: https://oah.org/conferences/oah24/sessions/session/?id=5525

Music: King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band's Mabel's Dream, 1923

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This special panel debrief edition of the Journal of American History Podcast features a conversation on "Queering Work: LGBT Labor Histories," held at the 2024 OAH Conference on American History.

In this episode, Lane Windham, Alex Melody Burnett, Ryan Patrick Murphy, and Shay Olmstead continue their important conversation about queer and trans workers, "hauntings" in queer history, and "queerbossing." LGBT historians have long focused on leisure and nightlife, but the workplace is also fundamental for understanding the queer past. Fear of job loss was one of the most salient aspects of living a queer life for much of the 20th century, and utterly shaped how LGBT people moved through the world. In some occupational settings, jobs could also affirm gender nonconformity and were also a key place where gay or trans people found each other.

This panel was solicited by LAWCHA.

Read more about the session here: https://oah.org/conferences/oah24/sessions/session/?id=5525

Music: King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band's Mabel's Dream, 1923

X: @theJAMhistory Facebook: The Journal of American History

This special panel debrief edition of the Journal of American History Podcast features a conversation on "Nursing for the Common Good: Health Activism, Social Justice, and the History of Nursing Work," held at the 2024 OAH Conference on American History.

In this panel, Kara Dixon Vuic, Cory Gatrall, Karissa Haugeberg, and Charissa Threat continue their important contribution to the conference. They consider nursing as political history, and how studying nursing leads to significant historiographical interventions in labor, political, and medical history. Their panel investigates how nurses have confronted issues as diverse as health, poverty, racism, gender, and the environment. The panel also examines how the nursing profession has responded to and reflected on these issues and how historians have understood the relationship between nursing, health crises, and community activism.

This panel was endorsed by LAWCHA.

Read more about the session here: https://www.oah.org/conferences/oah24/sessions/session/?id=5379

Music: King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band's Mabel's Dream, 1923

X: @theJAMhistory Facebook: The Journal of American History