Over the past two decades, scholars have begun to document the centrality of sexual assault in the U.S. political landscape. There has been significant research on how sexual assault (and anti-rape activism) shaped the long civil rights movement, military occupations, and the dynamics of modern feminism. However, scholars are only recently considering how the politics surrounding sexual assault have defined major state institutions, i.e., the military and the prison system. Likewise, stories of anti-rape activism and community organizing are often overshadowed by narratives that emphasize courtroom dramas and legal proceedings. In this episode, , Ruth Lawlor, R.M. Douglas, Catherine Jacquet, and Jana Lipman demonstrate the necessity of incorporating sexual assault, and activists’ resistance to it, in our understanding of 20th century institutions.

Read more about the session here: https://www.oah.org/conferences/oah24/sessions__trashed/session/?id=5218

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 "Neither the One nor the Other: The Native South in a Black and White World after 1900," held at the 2024 OAH Conference on American History.

In this episode, Angela P. Hudson, Denise E. Bates, Dixie Ray Haggard, Robert Caldwell, and Daniel Usner unpack their panel session, which examined how, after 1900, numerous state- or federally-acknowledged, unrecognized, or transplanted Native American groups remained the South despite the efforts of the federal and state governments to remove them in the past. Most non-Natives chose to disregard these indigenous people. Non-Natives justified their position by claiming “true” southern Natives were extinct or removed. Panelists explore the the persistence of Native communities in the South and their resistance to the marginalization and injustice imposed on them by Jim Crow segregation in this conversation.

This panel was endorsed by the OAH Committee on the Status of ALANA Historians, ALANA Histories, and the Agricultural History Society.

Read more about the session here: https://www.oah.org/conferences/oah24/sessions__trashed/session/?id=5273

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 "Getting the Story Straight: Queering Regional Identities," held at the 2024 OAH Conference on American History.

In this episode, La Shonda Mims and Wesley Phelps have a conversation with Marina about the importance of regionality in histories of queerness and HIV/AIDS, and how the dearth of attention to areas of the United States beyond east coast cities incorrectly homogenizes and erases queer experiences. This conversation came from Mims's and Phelps's panel session, which locates queerness in regions typically depicted as bastions of straightness. Together, they argue that queerness not only occurs everywhere, but has lasting implications that emanate outward to the national scale. Phelps’s paper interrogates the depiction of AIDS activist Ron Woodroof in the film Dallas Buyers Club and argues that the movie’s historical inaccuracies reveal an attempt to straight-wash what should be a queer narrative of regional identity. Katie Batza was unable to join the conversation, but their work is still present in this conversation. Batza’s paper queers the heartland region by examining the radical potential of religious institutions, which are often associated with the region’s straightness and political conservatism.

Read more about the session here: https://www.oah.org/conferences/oah24/sessions/session/?id=5395

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 "Missing Histories of Sexual Assault," held at the 2024 OAH Conference on American History.

In this episode, Katherine Ott, Rebecca Campbell, Lourdes Inoa Monegro, and Royleen J. Ross continue their important conversation about the lack of study, care, and affect surrounding sexual assault in history. Historical silences around sexual assault are ongoing and appalling. Although the cultural contexts, politics, and consequences of sexual assault are relevant to every field and time period, historians seldom include it as an analytical factor. This roundtable addresses critical issues that are missing from historical analysis, outdated interpretations, and the significance of race, gender, and disability and other starting points for writing sexual assault into history.

Between episode and production, Royleen J. Ross started a new position. She is enrolled at the Pueblo of Laguna, and currently serves as the American Psychological Association (APA) Division 45 president. She is a member of the Division 35/45 Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives Task Force. From a cultural psychology lens, Dr. Ross provides training through Pretty Fire Consulting LLC.

Read more about the session here: https://www.oah.org/conferences/oah24/sessions/session/?id=5506

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 "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

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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

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This special panel debrief edition of the Journal of American History Podcast features a conversation on "New Carceral Histories: Legacies of Punishment before the Era of Mass Incarceration," held at the 2024 OAH Conference on American History.

In this panel, Maile Arvin, Abigail Kahn, Halee Robinson, Derek Taira, and Walter Stern continue their important conversation about ethics and violence in historical research, generated from the papers they presented on this panel. These works critically consider both how we conceive of the carceral state and the purposes of punishment in the era prior to mass incarceration—to extract labor, to assimilate, to destroy kinship ties, and to construct the boundaries of who belongs in the United States empire. Besides providing a temporally distinct perspective, these works unite historiographical traditions that are often siloed—histories of incarceration, colonialism, and education—and, in doing so, highlight the interdependence of the penal system, American empire, and formal schooling in defining and enforcing the boundaries of belonging in American society. By being in service to disenfranchised voices in history, and highlighting the interconnectedness of incarceration, education, and colonialism, this panel seeks to inform and recast current debates on incarceration and abolitionism.

This panel was endorsed by the OAH Committee on the Status of ALANA Historians and ALANA Histories, OAH–JAAS Collaborative Committee, WHA, and SHGAPE.

Read more about the session here: https://www.oah.org/conferences/oah24/sessions/session/?id=5220

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

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