American Rambler With Colin Woodward

Colin reads from his 2012 paper, "4-F: Charles Bukowski and World War II." Born in 1920, Bukowski was a Los Angeles writer, epic alcoholic, and critic of all things status quo. But was he political? What did he have to say about World War II, where he was arrested for evading the draft? Here, you can find out. Bukowski was the subject of an earlier American Rambler podcast, which elicited a spirited response from a listener. Colin reads the listener's helpful comments.

Writer and editor Adam Bulger returns to the podcast to talk about some of his favorite books. Along the way, he and Colin discuss how our literary tastes change, how to balance reading and writing, and why great books are kinda like great movies. Harry Potter fans: cover your ears! And not because of the liberal profanity throughout this episode. For others, Colin and Adam manage to discuss everything from Hunter S. Thompson to Truman Capote. Happy reading!

In preparation for (yet another) job talk, Colin talks about what he's been doing for the last three years: working on the Lee Family Digital Archive at Stratford Hall. In his talk, he discusses what he's accomplished, the appeals of doing family history, and the pros and cons of digital publishing. It's another guest-free foray into podcasting excellence! 

Bill Cooper worked at Louisiana State University for nearly 50 years as a professor of southern history and as an administrator. A native of rural South Carolina, he studied with the imposing David Donald at Princeton and Johns Hopkins University before moving to Baton Rouge in 1968. Bill has published widely on southern politics, which has included the definitive and prize-winning biography Jefferson Davis, American. His latest book is Approaching Civil War and Southern History (LSU Press), a collection of essays spanning his entire accomplished career.         

Gaines Foster is professor of history at Louisiana State University, where he has taught for almost 40 years and where Colin was a graduate student. Gaines is the author of Ghosts of the Confederacy, which has become a classic study of the Lost Cause, Confederate tradition, and the politics of historical memory. Gaines also talks about Moral Reconstruction, published in 2003, which examines Christian lobbyists' ability to legislate morality in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Gaines continues to write about Civil War memory and is working on a collection of essays examining it. Given his long career as a historian, Gaines discusses how he has been fortunate to be where he is and how the job market these days for younger scholars is challenging, to say the least.

So, you wanna be a musician? Listen to Colin's talk with Mark Carson to find out. Mark has a doctoral degree from Louisiana State University, where he graduated in 2003 after completing a dissertation on southern politicians and the Vietnam War. Mark has long been playing and recording music, but since he finished grad school, he's been back and forth between New Orleans and Nashville. His latest group is Carson Station. They are a country outfit that has a new single and are working on putting out not one, but two albums. Do you have what it takes, kid? Listen and get the lowdown on the 21st century music business from someone who has paid his dues, but still loves it.

Jon Bachman stops by again to talk with Colin about a film he recently saw and is excited about, Rumble: Native Americans Who Rocked the World. Jon discusses Link Wray's Virginia connections, Jon's family's own music history, the realities of teaching history to the pubic, and of course, politics. It's an episode that covers everything from The Divine Comedy (the 1940s one) to Carl Jung!

John Heckman is the Tattooed Historian. He is prone to go "all in" when it comes to his work. But as he tells Colin, it took him a while before he decided history was what he wanted to do with his life. Despite the fact that he was running a Civil War artillery unit as a living historian in his teens, he tried accounting and other jobs before realizing history was his true passion. John now has a podcast, where he is talking with some of the best historians in the field about their craft. His story shows how our fear of failure--hopefully--is eventually overcome by our fear of never having done what we really want to do.

Over the past thirty years, Brian Palmer has worked at various jobs around the globe as a journalist, filmmaker, photographer, and teacher. He is based in Richmond now, but he is originally from the northeast, where he attended Brown University. Since then, he has covered news in places as diverse as China and Iraq. Recently, Brian published an article, "The Costs of the Confederacy" in Smithsonian, which examines how public dollars have been used in the South to fund "heritage" projects and their warped take on slavery and the Civil War. Brian's fascination with history, our racial past, and public memory has served him well as he fights a new battle to reclaim an African American cemetery in Richmond's East End. 

In preparation for a talk he recently gave at an undisclosed location, Colin talks about his career as an archivist, which began in 2007 at the Virginia Historical Society and has continued on to Smith College, the University of Arkansas Little Rock, and Stratford Hall. What's it like being an archivist, and how does a historian make the transition from graduate school to the archives world? Listen and find out! 

Dave Coogan is a professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University. He is also the editor of Writing Our Way Out: Memoirs from Jail, which collects stories from various people who who found themselves in the criminal justice system in Richmond. A native of New England, Dave talks about how he ended up in Virginia and how a horrible crime in the Church Hill neighborhood of Richmond led him on a path to his current work. He talks with Colin about the importance of getting people--whether criminals, students, or family members--to tell their stories. And he will soon be telling more stories on his own podcast.

A native of Georgia with humble roots and a love for music (including Johnny Cash), historian Keri Leigh Merrit has been busy. She is the author of Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South (2017) and is the co-editor of Reconsidering Southern Labor History: Race, Class, and Power (2018). As she tells Colin, since she graduated with a Ph.D. from the University of Georgia in 2014, her scholarly path has not been a traditional one. Throughout her life, Keri has been fascinated by questions of class and race in America, whether in discussion of the antebellum period, labor movements, or the southern prison system. Listen as she discusses how historians outside academia have to carve their own path and how very often, it involves doing things no one ever talked about in graduate school.    

Thomas Bevilacqua is a California native who has spent a lot of time in the South. Earlier this year, he graduated with a Ph.D. in English at Florida State University, where he now teaches. He talks with Colin about his dissertation research, which is based on many years of studying Catholic writers such as Hemingway, Kerouac, Walker Percy, and Flannery O'Connor. Tom's writings on the church have also given him an appreciation for the literate, rich, and existentialist world of Mad Men.  Tom is also a huge basketball fan. Earlier this year, he published Golden Age: The Brilliance of the 2018 Champion Golden State Warriors. He is also a writer for the Warriors for the SB Nation website. Tom had a good year. Hear him talk about it with American Rambler! 

Craig Belcher is the Arts and Entertainment Editor at Richmond Magazine. But as he tells Colin, he's been writing and working as a journalist for a long time. A native of the Richmond area, he has seen many changes happen in the print industry over the past few decades. Craig also knows a lot about music. He worked for more than a decade as a writer, producer, and host of his own television show, where he interviewed such classic hip hop artists as Chuck D, M.C. Serch, and De La Soul. He also talks about his recent articles on Sister Rosetta Tharpe and the need for a Virginia Music Hall of Fame. It's a conversation that covers everything from Q-Tip to Link Wray and GWAR, with some good advice on the writing life thrown in.

Robert Kenzer is known for his community studies of North Carolina during the Civil War era. But as he discusses with Colin, his courses at the University of Richmond (where is a professor) have included a class on Abraham Lincoln and baseball. Bob talks about his career path as a historian, which began in California, shifted to Harvard (where he studied under David Donald), and years in Utah before landing in Richmond.

Originally from California and the daughter of a sculptor, Ana Edwards has found her niche in Richmond. She works at the American Civil War Museum downtown, but before joining the staff there, she made a name for herself as a radio personality and activist. A native of Los Angeles, she moved to Virginia with fears about just how Gothic the South was. That was thirty years ago. Going from the West to the East Coast has given her a lot to talk about. Ana discusses her fascination with the South's people and past--something only intensified by research into her own African American ancestry. In Richmond, Ana has been busy navigating the waters of public history, which has included museum work, broadcasting, and reclamation projects. She also discusses her interest in the 1800 Gabriel revolt in Richmond and how that tells us much about Virginia and its long troubled (and complicated) race relations.  

You may know Colonel Wilkerson from his appearances on Bill Maher's show Real Time. The colonel has made a name for himself as a straight-shooting Republican, who had a long career in the military, where he worked closely with Colin Powell during the second Bush administration. He sits down with American Rambler at the College of William and Mary, where the colonel is Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Government and Public Policy. He talks with Colin about being an Eisenhower Republican, his service in Vietnam, and how we are on a dangerous political course under Trump. It's an hour of political talk that covers everything from My Lai to the invasion of Iraq. 

Put your history hat on, y'all! Colin talks with John C. Rodrigue, one of his professors at LSU (back when Colin was a lowly grad student). John now teaches at Stonehill College in Massachusetts, but he's a Jersey guy, who studied at Rutgers and Columbia. He also has roots in Louisiana's Cajun country going back to early 1900s. John tells Colin about his academic road to studying Reconstruction, more specifically, examining the postwar years in the sugar parishes of Louisiana. John is the author of two books about the Reconstruction era. His latest, Lincoln and Reconstruction, was published in 2013. He talks with Colin not only about his own work, but his encounters with historians such as James Roark, Ira Berlin, and the infamous Eugene Genovese. He also discusses his new book project, which examines emancipation in the Mississippi Valley. What does John think about Woodrow Wilson? How does William Shakespeare sum up the southern planter class? Listen and find out!

Singer, guitarist, and songwriter Adam Faucett grew up in the suburbs of Little Rock, where he spent a lot of time listening to Otis Redding, Sonic Youth, Nirvana, Neil Young, and Radiohead. He also had a love for horror movies. His influences have led him to blend light and dark themes in songs about love, loss, and growing up in Arkansas. He also makes historical references to things as varied as the southern mystic Edgar Cayce and the Mackay Bennett, the ship that picked up the human wreckage left in the wake of the Titanic sinking.  Adam has a new album out, It Took the Shape of a Bird. As on previous records, he has written songs that are powerful and unique. Adam sits down with Colin in Richmond to talk about life on the road, growing up in Arkansas, and what it's like to be a working musician.    

Colin has New York author, photographer, filmmaker, folklorist, and English professor Bruce Jackson on for a second talk. This time, the conversation covers everything from prison punks to Star Wars and the power of myth. Bruce discusses his literary influences (especially Faulkner) and how his background in literature has informed his teaching of film and television (as in his past college course on Breaking Bad). Bruce also examines the rarity of successful academic couples, close shaves on death row, and his friendship with French philosopher Michel Foucault.