Katherine R Jewell | Fitchburg State University (original) (raw)

Books by Katherine R Jewell

In Live from the Underground: College Radio and the Culture Wars, I am researching the history of... more In Live from the Underground: College Radio and the Culture Wars, I am researching the history of college radio since FM stations began appearing in the 1960s. These stations became sites of conversation, and sometimes conflict, regarding the direction of American music and culture. Student DJs challenged university administrators to fulfill higher education’s promises to expand diversity and to serve the public through cultural development. They succeeded in establishing a prominent role for college radio in the music industry, in many genres. Yet I’m also exploring how stations, DJs, or administrators often failed in their missions to foster authentic expression and expand representation for music and voices unable to gain purchase on commercial airwaves. These stories reveal college radio's place at the center of the culture wars since the 1970s.

Organized in 1933, the Southern States Industrial Council's (SSIC) adherence to the South as a un... more Organized in 1933, the Southern States Industrial Council's (SSIC) adherence to the South as a unique political and economic entity limited its members' ability to forge political coalitions against the New Deal. The SSIC's commitment to regional preferences, however, transformed and incorporated conservative thought in the post-World War II era, ultimately complementing the emerging conservative movement in the 1940s and 1950s. In response to New Dealers' attempts to remake the southern economy, the New South industrialists - heirs of C. Vann Woodward's 'new men' of the New South - effectively fused cultural traditionalism and free market economics into a brand of southern free enterprise that shaped the region's reputation and political culture. Dollars for Dixie demonstrates how the South emerged from this refashioning and became a key player in the modern conservative movement, with new ideas regarding free market capitalism, conservative fiscal policy, and limited bureaucracy.

Papers by Katherine R Jewell

Journal of Southern History, Aug 1, 2014

University Press of Florida eBooks, Oct 2, 2011

Journal of Southern History, Nov 1, 2022

Resonance, 2022

WRAS at Georgia State assumed status as one of the nation’s leading college radio stations in the... more WRAS at Georgia State assumed status as one of the nation’s leading college radio stations in the 1980s. Yet as this article reveals, participants confronted a crucial moment in the emergence of college radio’s role in the music industry and the emergence of alternative rock as they debated the station’s new format in 1979. While the format fight revealed the dynamics between DJs who preferred a sound that was familiar and palatable to a wide range of audiences versus those who wished to air less conventional, more adventurous rock music, the surrounding politics instead reveal the inseparability of college radio and its role in popular culture from campus politics, particularly the ongoing Black Campus Movement. WRAS’s internal format fight, while heated, neglected the concerns of other students at Georgia State, particularly Black students, who felt shut out of the power dynamics of these stations. Federal regulatory shifts also influenced station affairs through a more public relations–oriented administration, all of which reveal the intersection between institutional and regulatory politics and the soundscapes being created by college radio participants in the early 1980s. The debates regarding genre and sound at Georgia State thus reveal the dynamics that shaped college radio, yet which nonetheless rendered Black students as bystanders in determining the sound of that influence. This article argues that college radio’s “modern” reputation as the home of college rock obscures campus dynamics that were important in shaping college radio culture and practices, which belie stations’ commitment to liberal values of sonic diversity. This history expands beyond the influence of a single, powerful station, moreover, and reveals the potential for expanded research into the emerging network and influence of college radio throughout its history.

History, Jun 29, 2017

Press. 2016. xv + 251pp. £16.99. One of the side-effects of the explosion in historical sub-disci... more Press. 2016. xv + 251pp. £16.99. One of the side-effects of the explosion in historical sub-disciplines since the 1960s has been a renewed interest in historical methods and practice. No longer accepting that the task of a historian is simply to go to the archives, find material and write an account of 'how it really was' (wie es eigentlich gewesen), historians now daily grapple with issues around the creation, selection, meaning and interpretation of evidence. A further consequence of this development has been that today no British undergraduate course is seen as complete if it does not include at least one course covering historiographical debates and methods. No surprise then that there has been a proliferation of books aimed at helping tutors and undergraduates alike to steer their way through what Popkin terms the 'glorious confusion' of new historical approaches. Sometimes taking the Elton/Carr debate at their starting point, sometimes grappling with the implications of the 'cultural turn', there is now a bewildering array of books aimed at getting students to move beyond thinking of the writing of history as simply putting facts down in the right order. Less common are works which try to set out what John Burrow called 'a history of histories'. These move from Herodotus, the problematic founding father of the discipline, through the historians of Antiquity, and via Ranke and the professionalization of history, to the present. In the process they often explore what unites the idea and practice of history over two and a half millennia, and how different periods and individual historians shaped it in distinctive ways. Yet despite the resources now available for those teaching in this field, the topic remains commonly unpopular with, and often frustratingly impenetrable to, students who yearn for the simplicity of narrative accounts of the past. Consequently those venturing into this terrain risk both simply adding yet another book to the pile and failing to illuminate their chosen field in the process. Popkin's work, however, sidesteps these pitfalls, and instead constructs a lucid and approachable account of how history has changed over time, while also engaging seriously with the question of what it means to be a historian in the contemporary world. As readers we benefit from two strengths which Popkin brings to his writing: having taught historiography for over three decades he keeps at the front of his mind the needs of students; and secondly every page crackles with his deep enthusiasm for history as a way into understanding our world. This book is no mere tick box exercise which dutifully covers chronological ground

Organized in 1933, the Southern States Industrial Council's (SSIC) adherence to the South as ... more Organized in 1933, the Southern States Industrial Council's (SSIC) adherence to the South as a unique political and economic entity limited its members' ability to forge political coalitions against the New Deal. The SSIC's commitment to regional preferences, however, transformed and incorporated conservative thought in the post-World War II era, ultimately complementing the emerging conservative movement in the 1940s and 1950s. In response to New Dealers' attempts to remake the southern economy, the New South industrialists - heirs of C. Vann Woodward's 'new men' of the New South - effectively fused cultural traditionalism and free market economics into a brand of southern free enterprise that shaped the region's reputation and political culture. Dollars for Dixie demonstrates how the South emerged from this refashioning and became a key player in the modern conservative movement, with new ideas regarding free market capitalism, conservative fiscal policy, and limited bureaucracy.

The Journal of American History, Mar 1, 2018

Forthcoming, University of South Carolina Press (November 2016)

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History, Oct 27, 2020

The term “Sunbelt” connotes a region defined by its environment. “Belt” suggests the broad swath ... more The term “Sunbelt” connotes a region defined by its environment. “Belt” suggests the broad swath of states from the Atlantic coast, stretching across Texas and Oklahoma, the Southwest, to southern California. “Sun” suggests its temperate—even hot—climate. Yet in contrast to the industrial northeastern and midwestern Rust Belt, or perhaps, “Frost” Belt, the term’s emergence at the end of the 1960s evoked an optimistic, opportunistic brand. Free from snowy winters, with spaces cooled by air conditioners, and Florida’s sandy beaches or California’s surfing beckoning, it is true that more Americans moved to the Sunbelt states in the 1950s and 1960s than to the deindustrializing centers of the North and East. But the term “Sunbelt” also captures an emerging political culture that defies regional boundaries. The term originates more from the diagnosis of this political climate, rather than an environmental one, associated with the new patterns of migration in the mid-20th century. The term defined a new regional identity: politically, economically, in policy, demographically, and socially, as well as environmentally. The Sunbelt received federal money in an unprecedented manner, particularly because of rising Cold War defense spending in research and military bases, and its urban centers grew in patterns unlike those in the old Northeast and Midwest, thanks to the policy innovations wrought by local boosters, business leaders, and politicians, which defined politics associated with the region after the 1970s. Yet from its origin, scholars debate whether the Sunbelt’s emergence reflects a new regional identity, or something else.