Person

JD Vance

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JD Vance

J.D. Vance's Anti-Declaration

Truths self-evident no more.
Foggy hills in Appalachia.

Love in the Time of Hillbilly Elegy: On JD Vance’s Appalachian Grift

Justin B. Wymer knows a snake when he sees one.
JD Vance, along with characters from the Scorsese movie "Gangs of New York," shown over a background of a map of New York City

JD Vance is Just Another Know Nothing Nativist

MAGA has been a largely white movement of non-urban people who seem to think that people unlike them are scary and that there is only safety in homogeneity.
J. D. Vance speaking at a campaign rally for Donald Trump.

J. D. Vance Is Summoning the John Birch Society

Far from a novel form of populism, J. D. Vance’s appeals are indistinguishable from the economic vision of the 1970s John Birch Society.

The Mythical Whiteness of Trump Country

"Hillbilly Elegy" has been used to explain the 2016 election, but its logic is rooted in a dangerous myth about race in Appalachia.
Clark Mills’s statue of Andrew Jackson, Lafayette Park, Washington D.C., circa 1910–1925

Vance’s Junk History

When Donald Trump and his followers go in search of historical forerunners to justify their regime, they turn with striking regularity to the presidency.

How America Invented the Red State

According to conventional wisdom, the last quarter century of elections has proved that most of the country leans conservative. It all started with a map.
Donald Trump at a podium

The New Trumpian Bargain

Trump's second term echoes 19th-century policies: tariffs and immigration limits protect workers, while deregulation risks widening inequality.
Donald Trump stands in front of a microphone, holding a graph titled "Illegal Immigration into the US."

Trump’s Anti-Haitian Hate Has Deep American Roots

The former president’s grotesque demagoguery is just the latest in a long line of vicious attacks on residents and immigrants from the island nation.
Lyndon B. Johnson and Lady Bird Johnson visit the Fletcher family in Inez, Kentucky, in 1964.

Who’s to Blame for White Poverty?

Dismantling it requires getting the story right.
partner

The Forebears of J.D. Vance and the New Right

Revisiting the Agrarian-Distributists and their fabrication of an American past.
Still from the film Medium Cool, 1969.

That Ain't Cool

Capturing the 1968 DNC.
Photo of young woman looking at camera in blue-walled room. Above her an image of Jesus Christ is framed. Through the room's window a shirtless man can be seen on a porch, also facing the camera

Left Behind

J.D. Vance's "Hillbilly Elegy" and Steven Stoll's "Ramp Hollow" both remind us that the history of poor and migratory people in Appalachia is a difficult story to tell.
Book cover of "What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia."

Appalachia Isn’t Trump Country

A region that outsiders love to imagine but can’t seem to understand.
Girls in Appalachia in 1935.

The Invention of the 'White Working Class'

A spate of new books explores the composition and motivations of the demographic that has been credited with electing Trump.

The Rage of White Folk

How the silent majority became a loud and angry minority.
Lighter falling onto a pile of books.

What If History Died by Sanctioned Ignorance?

We must mobilize now to defend our profession, not only with research and teaching but in the realm of politics and public persuasion.
55th Massachusetts marches through Charleston, 1865.
partner

Elevating the Few

What J.D. Vance excludes from the history of the Civil War and immigration.
A former coal miner works at a computer station at the Bit Source LLC office in Pikeville, Kentucky

The Rise and Fall of the Knowledge Worker

Knowledge workers, were supposed to be the beneficiaries of neoliberalism and globalization until AI and a hypercompetitive employment market.
Portrait of Pope Leo XIII by Franz von Lenbach, 1886.

The Heresy of Americanism

Jack Hanson on the new pope and his namesake.