Drafting the Past

Kate talks with environmental historian Bathsheba Demuth about her book, Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait (Norton, 2019), her essays, and how she helps readers to feel, see, and even smell the places she's writing about. Listen to learn how she organizes her many forms of research, the writers she's looking to for inspiration now, and what advice she would give to herself in grad school.

For the tenth episode of Drafting the Past, Kate Carpenter interviews historian and journalist David M. Perry. David is the author of many, many essays (find the whole list here), as well as Sacred Plunder: Venice and the Aftermath of the Fourth Crusade (Penn State University Press, 2015). More recently, he is the co-author, with Matthew Gabriele, of The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe (HarperCollins, 2021). Our conversation covered everything from how David uses a recorder to draft his work, how he and Matthew approached co-writing, how he came to love writing after first considering it an ordeal, and much more.

For this episode, host Kate Carpenter interviews Dr. Tanisha C. Ford. Tanisha is a writer, historian, and professor of history at the City University of New York Graduate Center. She is the author of three books and many articles on subjects at the intersection of politics and culture, and especially on Black fashion and social movements. Her first book, Liberated Threads: Black Women, Style, and the Global Politics of Soul, was published in 2016, and in 2019 she released her second book, Dressed in Dreams: A Black Girl’s Love Letter to the Power of Fashion. Her newest book, Our Secret Society: Mollie Moon and the Glamour, Money, and Power Behind the Civil Rights Movement came out just last month. It’s a fascinating biography of famed Black fundraiser and activist Mollie Moon that takes readers into the world of an overlooked aspect of the civil rights era. Kate's conversation with Tanisha covers how she brought the world of Mollie Moon to life, her methods for organizing her sources--the "oldest of old school"--and why she's glad she was an English major.

In this episode, Kate welcomes historian Dr. Nathan Perl-Rosenthal. Nathan is a professor history at the University of Southern California. His first book, Citizen Sailors: Becoming American in the Age of Revolution, came out in 2015. His new book just came out this month, February 2024, from Basic Books. It’s called The Age of Revolutions and the Generations Who Made It, and it tells the history of the revolutionary era from 1760 to 1825 across multiple nations and many individual lives. Nathan and Kate talked about the merits of messy outlines, how historians could borrow the techniques of fiction writers, and why his new book was a bit like making cheese – you’ll just have to listen to find out what that’s all about.

Welcome back to the third season of Drafting the Past! I’m thrilled about the lineup of historians that I’ll get to bring to you this year. I know you’re going to love them. That includes today’s guest, Dr. Benjamin Park. Ben is an associate professor of history at Sam Houston State University, and the author of three books. His first two were American Nationalisms: Imagining Union in the Age of Revolutions, and Kingdom of Nauvoo: The Rise and Fall of a Religious Empire on the American Frontier. His newest book, which came out just this month, is called American Zion: A New History of Mormonism. I was excited to have the chance to talk with Ben about how he tackled a book with such an impressive scope, how he stays disciplined about what to leave in and what two cut, and two pieces of really excellent, practical writing advice from his editors. You’ll have to listen until the end for those.