Flashback: American Historians on Movies

This week on Flashback, we’re covering a story about the power of music and the stories it tells — Ryan Coogler’s 2025 historical vampire-drama blockbuster Sinners. Fresh out of theaters, University Distinguished Professor of Music at Miami University Dr Tammy Kernodle joins to unpack the history behind one of this year’s buzziest releases and all the ways in which it speaks to the layered histories of the development of American music. We unpack the film’s centerpiece sequence, music’s relationship to stories, ancestry, and religion, the legacies of Black music in the United States, and much much more! You can find Tammy's Smithsonian Folkways playlist, "My Song is My Weapon: The Long Sonic History of Black Resistance" here, and more about her work on her website. Follow us on bluesky at @flashbackhistory.bsky.socialFlashback is graciously supported by the University of Oxford’s Rothermere American Institute Enjoy the show? Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe on your podcast provider of choice

It was the shot heard around the world….or at least in cinemas in the summer of 2000. This week on the podcast we’re covering The Patriot, the historical epic starring Mel Gibson brought to us by the master of disaster himself, Roland Emmerich. Dr Krysten Blackstone joins to dive deep into examining this movie’s relationship to the conflict it depicts, the American Revolutionary War. We get into it all: soldiers’ morale, the beef between the Continental Army and state militias, Jason Issac’s villainy, and of course the eternal question — where are all the movies about the Revolution? Follow us on bluesky at @flashbackhistory.bsky.socialFlashback is graciously supported by the University of Oxford’s Rothermere American Institute Enjoy the show? Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe on your podcast provider of choice

Hold onto your hats cause this episode is about to be a...blast! Join us as we talk Blast from the Past, a zany 1999 sci-fi/rom-com about a man raised in a nuclear bunker emerging in (the post-apocalyptic world of) 1990s Los Angeles. Senior Lecturer in American History at the University of Lincoln Tom Bishop joins to talk all things fallout shelters (and bunkers, vaults, etcetera). We talk about domesticity in the Cold War, the late century's nostalgia for the 50s and 60s, and, of course, Brendan Fraser. All this and more on today's episode! You can find Tom's work wherever fine academic monographs are sold near you. Follow us on bluesky at @flashbackhistory.bsky.socialFlashback is graciously supported by the University of Oxford’s Rothermere American Institute Enjoy the show? Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe on your podcast provider of choice

Flashback is back from the DEAD (or at least a season break) in order to cover 2012's most infamous Lincoln movie...Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. DPhil student Ben Willis joins to talk about this infamous piece of cinematic history which dared to ask the question: what if vampires were the secret malevolent force behind major events of American History, and what if Abraham Lincoln hunted them? We discuss Lincoln as an abolitionist, the idea behind the slave power, the ethics of vampires, how many horses could have possibly existed in central Illinois, and more! Follow us on bluesky at @flashbackhistory.bsky.socialFlashback is graciously supported by the University of Oxford’s Rothermere American Institute Enjoy the show? Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe on your podcast provider of choice.

This week we are borne back into the roaring 20s and the….teeming two-thousand tens? to discuss Baz Luhrmann’s 2013 adaptation of the F Scott Fitzgerald masterpiece, The Great Gatsby. Dr Emily Brady, Broadbent Junior Research Fellow at Christ Church, joins to talk all things Gatsby, Gatsby, Gatsby! The roaring 1920s, the book’s long-lasting legacy versus the movie’s somewhat controversial reputation, the music, the costumes, the actors, the green light - we talk it all in the final episode of this season. What else is there to say? It’s the Great Gatsby! You can follow Emily on Bluesky at @emilybrady.bsky.social, where she posts about her all of her current and upcoming workFollow us on bluesky at @flashbackhistory.bsky.socialFlashback is graciously supported by the University of Oxford’s Rothermere American Institute Enjoy the show? Please remember to rate, review, and subscribe on your podcast provider of choice