S6E10 Mark Johnson - University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Our guest today is a historian of Civil War memory and Southern foodways, notably for our purposes BBQ and, wait for it, BACON! Mark A. Johnson is an assistant professor of history at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. A native of Milwaukee but from everywhere (his father's business moved the family all over the country), Mark earned his BA from Purdue University, an MA from the University of Maryland, and his PhD from the University of Alabama, where, you guessed it, he partook of Friend-of-the-Pod John Beeler's Pork-o-Rama! Mark is the author of An Irresistible History of Alabama Barbecue (History Press)and Rough Tactics: Black Performance in Political Spectacles, 1877-1932 (University of Mississippi Press), and the forthcoming American Bacon: The Cultural History of a Food Phenomenon (University of Georgia Press). Mark teaches courses on Southern history and Foodways, as well as a popular course on Civil War Memory, in which students do projects using a Confederate cemetery next to campus.

Join us for a fun chat with Mark Johnson - we'll talk moving around the country as a kid, Civil War soldiers and the "high water mark" of bacon, selling treadmills at Sears, taking courses with Ira Berlin, and being "high on the hog." Enjoy!

Shout out to Little Coyote in Chattanooga!

Rec.: 12/15/2025