About the Project

Historias is a Spanish history podcast.  Each monthly episode is an interview with a historian on a particular topic in Spanish history.  Topics vary widely from ancient to modern times and may consider any part of the Iberian peninsula as well as the empires of any Iberian state.  Each episode maintains a high level of academic rigor while keeping the conversation accessible to the general public.  The primary language of the podcast is English, but some episodes are also in Spanish.

The purpose of the Historias podcast is to broaden the diffusion of the latest research on Spanish history and to promote dialogue between scholars across disciplinary, period and national boundaries.  The podcast’s name symbolizes these goals because “historias” means both “histories” and “stories” in Spanish.  The project aims to let scholars share their own perspectives and interpretations of the past, thus presenting different “histories,” while doing so through informal conversations that relate these interpretations as interesting “stories.”

Episodes labeled “Historias for BSPHS” are part of a partnership with the Association for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies’ Bulletin for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies in which we experiment with the possibilities of digital academic publishing by featuring interviews with some of the authors whose articles are published or whose books are reviewed in the BSPHS journal.

About the Hosts

Foster Chamberlin

Foster Chamberlin is an assistant professor with the Program in Cultures, Civilizations and Ideas at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey. He holds a Ph.D. in modern European history from the University of California- San Diego. His research concerns military culture and political violence in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century Spain. His dissertation, “Honor Bound: The Military Culture of the Civil Guard and the Political Violence of the Spanish Second Republic, 1931-1936,” explored how the military culture of Spain’s gendarmerie, the Civil Guard, contributed to making it the most violent profession of the Second Republic period that immediately preceded the Civil War. He has been the recipient of J. William Fulbright and Harry Frank Guggenheim Fellowships. He began the Historias podcast in 2017. Outside of academia, Foster enjoys surfing, hiking, camping, travelling and drinking craft beer. His personal website is fchamberlin.weebly.com.

Bretton Rodriguez

Bretton Rodriguez is a teaching assistant professor of Core Humanities at the University of Nevada, Reno. Prior to coming to Nevada, he worked as a visiting assistant professor of Humanities at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, and he earned a Ph.D. in Literature from the University of Notre Dame. His research focuses on the construction, use, and manipulation of the past in historical narratives from medieval and early modern Iberia. In particular, he examines how these narratives often served as political propaganda in support of specific rulers, dynasties, communities and ideas. More broadly, he is interested in questions regarding conceptions of history, the relationship between history writing and identity, and the use of the classical tradition in medieval and early modern Europe.  

Credits

• The 2022-23 theme music:
  “Endless Ocean{Taranta}”
  Performed by: Ahmad Mousavipour
  Courtesy of Ahmadmusic
• The 2021-22 theme music:
  “Bulerías”
  Lyrics by: Blas Infante
  Performed by: Paco de Lucía with Fernando de la Morena and Capullo de Jerez
  Courtesy of Centro Andaluz de Documentación del Flamenco
• The 2020-21 theme music:
  “El baile de Luis Alonso – Intermedio”
  By: Gerónimo Giménez
  Performed by: Comunidad de Madrid Orchestra & Chorus, Miguel Roa
  Courtesy of Naxos of America, Inc.
• The 2019-20 theme music:
  Mov. 3. “Danza, Allegro” from the Suite Ingenua
  By: Antonio José
  Performed By: Castile and León Symphony Orchestra, Alejandro Posada
  Courtesy of Naxos of America, Inc.
• The 2018-19 theme music:
  “Serenata andaluza”
  By: Manuel de Falla
  Performed by: Esteban Sánchez
  Courtesy of Ensayo Records
• The 2017-18 theme music:
  “Aragón (Fantasía)” from the Suite Española Op. 47
  By: Isaac Albéniz
  Performed by: Giuseppe Feola
  Courtesy of Brilliant Classics
• The header’s background image is of Christopher Columbus’s 1493 letter describing his first voyage.  The source is Wikimedia.  The image is in the public domain.
• Thanks to Ecem Dalgakıranlar for designing the podcast logo.
• Thanks to Leonidas Mylonakis for updating the web design.
• Thanks to Chris Gratien and Nir Shafir of the Ottoman History Podcast (ottomanhistorypodcast.com) for their inspiration, suggestions and support.