Tag: Peanuts


Dr. Blake Ball to Discuss Peanuts, Politics, & 20th-Century US History

On Thursday, February 10, The University of Alabama Department of History will host Dr. Blake Scott Ball for a discussion on Peanuts, politics, and US history in the 20th century. Ball is a 2017 PhD graduate from the Department of History. He is an assistant professor of history and chair of the Department of History and Political Science at Huntingdon College, in Montgomery, Alabama. Ball is the author of Charlie Brown’s America: The Popular Politics of Peanuts (Oxford UP, 2021). […]

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Blake Scott Ball (PhD, 2017) Publishes Charlie Brown’s America

Department of History PhD alumnus Blake Scott Ball has crafted an exceptional narrative of Cold War-era America through an unlikely subject: Charlie Brown. In Charlie Brown’s America: The Popular Politics of Peanuts, Dr. Ball looks into the emotional journey taken by the Peanuts comic from the Cold War to the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War. Ball finds that Peanuts was very political. Whether it was the battles over the Vietnam War, racial integration, feminism, or the future of […]

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UA Doctoral Alum Highlights “Peanuts” Role in D-Day Remembrance

Department doctoral alum Blake Scott Ball, currently an assistant professor of history at Huntingdon College, recently published an opinion piece in the Washington Post. Ball recounts the role that Charles Schultz’s Peanuts comic strip played in shaping the popular remembrance of the D-Day Invasion. From the June 6, 2019 edition of the Washington Post. “How Snoopy helped us remember D-Day” “Snoopy, who first appeared in the “Peanuts” comic strip in 1950, has been everywhere at this point: summer camp, college, […]

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Undergraduate Researches Alabama Food History

Rising Senior Rachel Remmes participated in the Department’s Honors Thesis program last year, completing a thesis under Dr. Charles Clark entitled “Southern Alabama’s Corn, Peanut, and Wheat Agriculture in the 20th Century and 21st Century Trends.” Remmes, a Secondary Education – Social Sciences and History major, says she has “always been interested in food as a representation of culture and the environment.” After taking a course on natural resource management, she was drawn to investigating the allocation of agricultural resources, specifically the staples of southern cuisine: […]

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Undergraduate Researches Alabama Food History

Rising Senior Rachel Remmes participated in the Department’s Honors Thesis program last year, completing a thesis under Dr. Charles Clark entitled “Southern Alabama’s Corn, Peanut, and Wheat Agriculture in the 20th Century and 21st Century Trends.” Remmes, a Secondary Education – Social Sciences and History major, says she has “always been interested in food as a representation of culture and the environment.” After taking a course on natural resource management, she was drawn to investigating the allocation of agricultural resources, […]

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Graduate Student Examines Link Between Charlie Brown and Charlie Hebdo.

Blake Ball, a graduate student in The University of Alabama History Department, wrote a recent editorial for al.com examining the use of Charles Schultz’s “Charlie Brown” character from the Peanuts comic strip during the European response to the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack. Read the piece on AL.com. Blake Scott Ball is an Alabama native and PhD student in history at The University of Alabama. His dissertation studies the Peanuts comic strip and the rise of conservatism between 1950 and 1980.

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