McCarthyism Archives - Public Seminar

Interviews

The Return of the Oppressed

A conversation with Robert Fieseler on American Scare and the recovery of queer history long obscured by state censorship

March 11, 2026 • by Robert W. Fieseler and Katelyn Kimberlin

“I kept wondering why it felt like we were all living in the United States of Florida,” says Robert W. Fieseler. In his new book, American Scare: Florida's Hidden Cold War on Black and Queer Lives (Penguin Random House, 2025), Fieseler examines the forces shaping the fastest-growing state in the ...

Multi Media

Black Women’s Political Power, the End of Sears, and Corporate Art Patronage

Past Present Episode 151

October 23, 2018 • by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, Nicole Hemmer and Neil J. Young

In this episode, Natalia, Neil, Niki, and guest historian Leah Wright Rigueur discuss black women and electoral politics, the closing of Sears, and corporate art patronage. Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: Black women voters are a crucial electoral contingent, especially in the upcoming midterm elections. ...

Black Women’s Political Power, the End of Sears, and Corporate Art Patronage

Feature

The Demonization of Ethel Rosenberg

An excerpt from Trans-generational Trauma and the Other

April 24, 2018 • by Adrienne Harris

The Demonization of Ethel Rosenberg, by Adrienne Harris, appears in Trans-generational Trauma and the Other, a volume of essays published in 2017 psychoanalytically meditating on the question of the transgenerational transmission of trauma, metastasizing and alienated historical ghosts, and the inter-subjectivity of Big History. Public Seminar spoke with Dr Harris – who is, among many ...

Feature

McCarthyism

An American Analog to Trumpism

February 23, 2017 • by Barbara Falk

Without denying the relevance of the European experience, however, I want to suggest there is plenty in U.S. history powerfully instructive to the present moment. When the Alien and Sedition Acts were passed in 1798, and again following World Wars I and II during the first and second “Red Scares,” ...