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15 Minute History — History
15 Minute History

15 Minute History is a history podcast designed for historians, enthusiasts, and newbies alike. This is a joint project of Hemispheres, the international outreach consortium at the University of Texas at Austin, and Not Even Past, a website with articles on a wide variety of historical issues, produced by the History Department at the University of Texas at Austin.

This podcast series is devoted to short, accessible discussions of important topics in world history, United States history, and Texas history with the award winning faculty and graduate students at the University of Texas at Austin, and distinguished visitors to our campus. They are meant to be a resource for both teachers and students, and can be enjoyed by anyone with an interest in history.

For more information and to hear our complete back catalog of episodes, visit our website!

Texas Podcast Network is brought to you by The University of Texas at Austin. Podcasts are produced by faculty members and staffers at UT Austin who work with University Communications to craft content that adheres to journalistic best practices. The University of Texas at Austin offers these podcasts at no charge. Podcasts appearing on the network and this webpage represent the views of the hosts, not of The University of Texas at Austin.

Latest Episodes:

Episode 144: Partisanship in the Revolutionary era Apr 25, 2024

Show notes

Political partisanship is not only a hallmark of US democracy today. There is also a long history of dysfunction and division as old as America. H.W. Brands's new book, Founding Partisans is a revelatory history of the Revolutionary era's stormy politics, which includes a look at the nation's earliest political parties — those of Hamilton and Jefferson — the federalists and the anti-federalists. It's an ugly story for the most part, but one that can hold its head high for establishing another hallmark of democracy — the peaceful transfer of power.

Episode 143: Glen Canyon and Water Infrastructure Apr 25, 2024

Show notes

Climate change and population growth is creating a new appreciation — and anxiety — around water infrastructure, both in the western United States and around the world. We're joined today by Professor Erika Bsumek, whose new book, The Foundations of Glen Canyon, focuses on America’s second highest concrete-arch dam. Not simply a massive piece of physical infrastructure it is also what Professor Bsumek calls an infrastructure of dispossession whose history shows us how cultural structures, power relations and indigenous knowledge and labor interacted in the 19th and 20th centuries — and gives us a window into how the might interact moving forward as the fight for western water intensifies in an age of climate change.

Episode 142: World War I and the Hapsburg Empire Apr 25, 2024

Show notes

The Hapsburg Empire was founded in 1282 (or 1526, depending on who you ask) and lasted until 1918. Despite its increasingly antiquated and illiberal tendencies, it survived the reformation, the thirty years war, the enlightenment, the age of Revolution, the revolutions of 1848, and the Austro-Prussian war of 1866 — but not World War I. We're joined today by Jonathan Parker who walks us through why. Jonathan is a historian of nationalism and national identity, especially within the Austro-Hungarian lands in the decades before and after the First World War. His current project examines the establishment of Czechoslovakia in 1918 and the transfer of popular allegiances from the Empire to the nation-state.

Episode 141: Reconstruction From Past to Present Dec 18, 2023

Show notes

In the wake of the Civil War, the Reconstruction Era emerged as a time of radical change in the 19th century United States. Dr. Peniel Joseph brings this conversation into the 20th and 21st centuries as we discuss his most recent book, The Third Reconstruction: America’s Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century.

Episode 140: Ridley Scott’s Napoleon Dec 07, 2023

Show notes

Ridley Scott's new film, Napoleon, is a monumental historical epic that has endured mixed reviews since its release last month, due to historical inaccuracies and narrative jumps. But do such criticisms miss the point? Today 15 Minute History is joined by Professor Judith Coffin, who studies and teaches French history at UT Austin, including the French Revolution and Napoleonic era.

Episode 139: New Theory of American History Dec 01, 2023

Show notes

"How can a nation founded on the homelands of dispossessed Indigenous peoples be the world's most exemplary democracy?" asks Professor Ned Blackhawk (Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone), author of The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History. Today, Dr. Blackhawk discusses what it would look like to build a new theory of American history that can fully grapple with the intertwined histories of the United States and Native America.

Episode 138: Sex, Race, and Labor in French Colonialism Nov 17, 2023

Show notes

Traditionally, we think about European power being built with ships and swords. However, new scholarship uncovers a more nuanced and complex picture. Today, 15 Minute history is joined by Mélanie Lamotte, a historian of the French Empire whose work demonstrates the role that sex, race and labor played in the global expansion of French power during the 17th and 18th centuries.

Episode 137: Jean Paul Sartre In The Arab World Nov 17, 2023

Show notes

In 1967, the French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre traveled to Egypt and Israel on a quest to understand the region and its conflicts. The trip would challenge and change him — and lead to accusations of betrayal. Today, 15 Minute History is joined by Yoav Di Capua, author of “No Exit Arab Existentialism, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Decolonization.”

Episode 136: Afro-Indigenous Histories of the US Feb 09, 2022

Show notes

Afro-Indigenous histories are central to the history of the United States, tribal sovereignty, and civil rights. Today, Dr. Kyle Mays (Saginaw Chippewa) author of An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States and Hip Hop Beats, Indigenous Rhymes: Modernity and Hip Hop in Indigenous North America, discusses the intersections of Black and Indigenous history through the lens of individuals whose lives existed at those intersections.

Episode 135: Connected Histories of Cuba and the United States Jan 26, 2022

Show notes

While the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Cold War are important aspects of the United States and Cuba's shared history, they are not the only elements the two share. According to today's guest and author of Cuba: An American History, Professor Ada Ferrer, there are the centuries of interconnected history between Cuba and the US.

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