Education:

• Ph.D., Yale University (1986)

• B.A., Brandies University (1968)

​​

Academic Appointments:

• Associate Professor, University of Chicago (1994 - 2017)

• Assistant/Associate Professor, University of California, San Diego (1986 - 1994)

• Visiting Research Scientist, University of Michigan, Center for African and Afro-American Studies, Post-Emancipation Societies Project (Fall 1989)

• Co-Editor, Freedmen and Southern Society Project, University of Maryland, College Park (1985)

• Lecturer, University of Virginia (Fall 1984)

• Assistant Professor of History, College of Charleston (1981 - 1982)

• Assistant Editor, Frederick Douglass Papers Project, Yale University (1978 - 1980)

​

Publications:

• The Work of Reconstruction: From Slave to Wage Laborer in South Carolina, 1860-1870. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

 

• "Re-Reading From Slavery to Freedom," Dubois Review: Social Science Research on Race, 7, no. 1 (2010): 12-15. [Tribute to John Hope Franklin]

• "History Without Illusion," in Deborah Gray White, ed., African American Women in the Historical Profession (University of North Carolina Press, 2008).

• "De l'esclave au citoyen: Les rituels politiques des ouvriers agricoles des plantations à l'époque de la guerre de Sécession américaine et de la Reconstruction," in Esclavage et Dépendances Serviles: Histoire Comparée ed. Myriam Cottias, Alessandro Stella, et Bernard Vincent l'Harmattan, 2006, pp. 169-84.

• "Circuits of Memory: Modern routes to slave pasts," Georgia Historical Quarterly 83, no. 3 (Fall 1999): 539-57 [review essay].

• "Rites and Power: Reflections on slavery, freedom, and political ritual," Slavery and Abolition 20, no. 1 (April 1999): 81-102, Special Issue, From Slavery to Emancipation in the Atlantic World, ed. Sylvia R. Frey and Betty Wood.

• "Scholarship and Passion: Reconsidering the Campaign Against Slavery," Common Knowledge, 2, no. 1 (Spring 1993): 118-24. [Review Essay].

• "Grassroots Reconstruction: Agricultural Laborers and Collective Action in South Carolina, 1860-1868," Slavery and Abolition 12, no. 3 (Dec. 1991): 173-82

• Ira Berlin, Thavolia Glymph, Steven F. Miller, Joseph P. Reidy, Leslie S. Rowland, and Julie Saville, Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867, Ser. 1, Vol. 2: The Wartime Genesis of Free Labor: The Lower South (Cambridge University Press, 1990). [Book. Co-editor and contributor].

• Ira Berlin, Barbara Jeanne Fields, Thavolia Glymph, Steven F. Miller, Joseph P. Reidy, Leslie S. Rowland, and Julie Saville, "Writing Freedom's History: The Destruction of Slavery," Prologue, 17, no. 4 (Winter 1985): 211-27.

• With John W. Blassingame, Richard G. Carlson, Clarence L. Mohr, John R. McKivigan, David R. Roediger, and Jason H. Silverman, The Frederick Douglass Papers: Speeches, Debates, and Interviews, Vol. 2: 1847-1854 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982). [Assistant editor and contributor].

• With John W. Blassingame, C. Peter Ripley, Lawrence N. Powell, Fionia E. Spiers, Clarence L. Mohr, and Carla B. Carr, The Frederick Douglass Papers: Speeches, Debates, and Interviews, Vol. 1: 1841-1846 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979). [Assistant-in-research and copy editor].

 

Lectures & Papers:

• The Legacy and Scholarship of Eugene D. Genovese, Organization of American Historians, annual meeting, Atlanta, 11 April 2014. [panelist]

• "Beyond Manumission: Fragments of Atlantic slave emancipations," Keynote lecture, Slavery, Race, and Nation conference, Rice University, 21-22 February 2014.

• "Sea as History: Archives, and Cross-Currents of Slavery and Freedom in Caribbean-Atlantic Archives," session Archives and History, at the PUF conference Globalization: Theories and Methods of Human Movement," University of Chicago, 3-4 May 2013.

• "Labor and Politics during Reconstruction." Lecture, Liberation and Literacy Colloquium, Princeton University, February 2012.

• "Ending the Civil War: Stories from Then and Now" Distinguished Lecturer, Civil War Symposium "Why are we still fighting the Civil War," Civil War Symposium sponsored by Alabama A & M and the University of Alabama at Huntsville, 14, 15 April 2011.

• Comment, "Mobilizing for Freedom: Agency & Constraint in the Post-Emancipation Carolinas," Southern Historical Association, Annual meeting, Charlotte, NC, 6 Nov 2010

• 13th Amendment Conference, Panel II: "The Meaning of Coercion," Commentator, University of Chicago Law, School, April 2009.

• Labor History Winter Symposium, Commentator, Melvin P. Ely, Israel on the Appomattox, Newberry Library, Dec 2008.

• "Slavery, Race, and the Re-Making of Liberty in the aftermath of Haitian Independence," Race, Ethnicity, and Religion: A Trans-Atlantic Perspective on Civil Society," German University Alliance, Freie Universität Berlin, Franke Institute for the Humanities, Nov 2008.

• "American Slaves and Their Properties," Chicago Humanities Forum, Franke Institute for the Humanities, April 2008.

• Newberry Library, Homewood-Flossmoor Teaching American History Consortium (HFAHC), 10, 11 July 2006, "Labor, Power, Resistance: Enslaved Workers' Political Views in the Era of Slave Emancipation, 1790-1860." [Seminar for secondary school teachers]

• "The stony road from slave emancipation to human rights." Prepared for delivery at Pennsylvania State University, Richards Civil War Center, Emancipation Symposium, 14 April 2005.

​​

Awards:

• Stanford Humanities Center, Senior Research Fellowship (1999 - 2000)

• Avery O. Craven prize, Organization of American Historians (Work of Reconstruction) (1995)

• Finalist, Lincoln Prize for Civil War Studies, Gettysburg College (Wartime Genesis of Free Labor: The Lower South) (1994)

• Co-recipient. Thomas Jefferson Prize, Society for History in the Federal Government (Wartime Genesis of Free Labor: The Lower South) (1991)

​​

Teaching:

• Colonizations: The Atlantic World (a core undergraduate course in the College civilizations sequence)

• Ending Slavery: Transatlantic Perspectives (undergraduate research seminar)

• The Haitian Revolution and Human Rights (undergraduate, graduate)

• Re-imagining the US Civil War and Reconstruction (undergraduate, graduate)

• Problems in Caribbean-Atlantic History (graduate)

• Slavery and Freedom in the Atlantic World to 1888 (graduate)