143 - Dr. Tore Olsson, Red Dead’s History: A Video Game, an Obsession, and America’s Violent Past

Dr. Tore Olsson is a historian of the United States since the Civil War, specializing in the U.S. South, popular culture, rural and agricultural history, transnational history, the environment, and food. His work emphasizes making history accessible and relevant to diverse audiences through writing and teaching. His most recent book, Red Dead’s History: A Video Game, an Obsession, and America’s Violent Past uses the Red Dead Redemption video games to explore American violence between 1870 and 1920, examining how disputes over capitalism and race fueled this turbulent era. His first book, Agrarian Crossings: Reformers and the Remaking of the US and Mexican Countryside (Princeton University Press, 2017), analyzed rural reform in the 1930s and 1940s and won five major awards. Currently, he is writing The Global Cowboy: How American Country Music Traveled and Transformed the World, which investigates the global rise of country music and its role in promoting rural values during the 20th century. His research has been supported by institutions like the National Endowment for the Humanities and published in leading academic journals. At the University of Tennessee, he teaches courses on food and agriculture, video games and history, the U.S. South, and U.S. and Latin American history, and he welcomes graduate applications in these fields.