Episode
Lauren Duval, "The Home Front: Revolutionary Households, Military Occupation, and the Making of American Independence" (Omohundro Institute and UNC Press, 2025)
- Podcast
- New Books in Women's History
- Published
- Jun 3, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 3543
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://traffic.megaphone.fm/NBNK3497524970.mp3
Actions
POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/new-books-in-women-s-history-4096544/episodes/lauren-duval-the-home-front-revolutionary-households-military-occupation-and-the-making-of-american-independence-omohundro-institute-and-unc-press-2025/transcription-requests
Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-books-in-women-s-history-4096544/lauren-duval-the-home-front-revolutionary-households-military-occupation-and-the-making-of-american-independence-omohundro-institute-and-unc-press-2025.md
Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.
Summary
Prior to the American Revolution, the urban centers of colonial North America had little direct experience of war. With the outbreak of violence, British forces occupied every major city, invading the most private of spaces: the home. By closely considering the dynamics of the household—how people moved within it, thought about it, and wielded power over it—The Home Front reveals the ways in which occupation fundamentally upended the structures of colonial society and created opportunities for unprecedented economic and social mobility. In occupied cities, British officers usurped male authority to quarter themselves with families, patriot wives governed households in their husbands' absence, daughters flirted with officers, domestic servants disappeared with soldiers, and enslaved kin absconded to British lines in pursuit of freedom. As Lauren Duval shows, the unique conditions of occupation produced an aggrieved American population bound by shared emotional distress and domestic disorder. In the wake of this deeply disorienting experience, elite Americans deliberately reconsecrated the private home as a national symbol that epitomized masculine authority. Building on a stunning wealth of primary sources, Duval vividly captures daily life during the Revolution through the eyes and ears of those who intimately experienced it, showing how men and women of all races, statuses, and states of freedom understood its implications for their lives, families, and the nascent American Republic. In this episode Dr. Lauren Duval (University of Oklahoma) and Leah Cargin (University of Oklahoma and Journal of Women’s History) discuss The Home Front: Revolutionary Households, Military Occupation, and the Making of American Independence (Omohundro Institute and UNC Press, 2025). We…