Joshua D. Rothman | |
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Academic background | |
Education | BA, 1994, Cornell University MA, 1995, PhD, 2000, University of Virginia |
Thesis | Notorious in the neighborhood: interracial sex and interracial families in early national and antebellum Virginia (2000) |
Doctoral advisor | Edward L. Ayers and Peter S. Onuf |
Academic work | |
Institutions | University of Alabama |
Joshua Daniel Rothman is an American historian. He is a professor and chair for the department of history at the University of Alabama.
Rothman earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Cornell University [1] before enrolling at the University of Virginia for his PhD. [2]
Upon earning his PhD,Rothman joined the department of history at the University of Alabama as an Assistant professor. In this role,he published his first book on the history of interracial sex in Virginia before the Civil War titled Notorious in the Neighborhood,Sex and Families Across the Color Line in Virginia,1787-1861. [3] The book discusses how the fluidity of sexual interracial relationships occurred during times when society and law clashed. Rothman explores how white supremacy was rampant in Virginia while society simultaneously accepted interracial relationships such as Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. [4] Following the publication of Notorious in the Neighborhood, he received an American Antiquarian Society-National Endowment For the Humanities Fellowship to conduct research for a book on American expansion to the cotton frontiers of the Old Southwest. [5] The book was later published as Flush Times and Fever Dreams:A Story of Capitalism and Slavery in the Age of Jackson in 2012 through the University of Georgia Press. [6] It went on to receive the Gulf South Historical Association’s Michael V.R. Thomason Book Award for the best book on the history of the Gulf South and Southern Historical Association’s Frank L. and Harriet C. Owsley Award for the best book in southern history. [7]
Following the publication of his book,Rothman continued to serve as director of the Frances S. Summersell Center for the Study of the South,where he received an $18,000 grant from the Southern Foodways Alliance to research barbeques in the South. Since barbecue are a major aspect of the Southern lifestyle,he wished to study how barbecue became a cultural phenomenon and how the cuisine developed over time. [8] He also co-directed a research project with colleagues at Cornell University and the University of New Orleans titled Freedom on the Move:A Database of Fugitives from North American Slavery. [9] Their project,which received a $300,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities,aimed to digitize every advertisement for a runaway slave in North American newspapers. [10] As a result of his overall academic research,Rothman was appointed Chair of Alabama's department of history in 2016. [11] In 2019,Rothman accepted an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship to conduct research for his newest book,The Ledger and the Chain:How Domestic Slave Traders Shaped America. [12]
John Andrews Murrell,the "Great Western Land Pirate" also known as John A. Murrell and commonly spelled as Murel and Murrel,was a bandit and criminal operating in the United States,along the Mississippi River,in the 19th century. Murrell had his first criminal conviction,for horse theft,as a teenager and was branded with an "HT",flogged,and sentenced to six years in prison. He was released in 1829. Murrell was convicted a second and final time,for the crime of slave stealing,in the Circuit Court of Madison County,Tennessee,and incarcerated in the Tennessee State Penitentiary in Nashville from 1834 to 1844.
Eston Hemings Jefferson was born into slavery at Monticello,the youngest son of Sally Hemings,a mixed-race enslaved woman. Most historians who have considered the question believe that his father was Thomas Jefferson,the third President of the United States. Evidence from a 1998 DNA test showed that a descendant of Eston matched the Jefferson male line,and historical evidence also supports the conclusion that Thomas Jefferson was probably Eston's father. Many historians believe that Jefferson and Sally Hemings had six children together,four of whom survived to adulthood.
Madison Hemings was the son of the mixed-race enslaved woman Sally Hemings and her enslaver,President Thomas Jefferson. He was the third of her four children to survive to adulthood. Born into slavery,according to partus sequitur ventrem,Hemings grew up on Jefferson's Monticello plantation,where his mother was enslaved. After some light duties as a young boy,Hemings became a carpenter and fine woodwork apprentice at around age 14 and worked in the Joiner's Shop until he was about 21. He learned to play the violin and was able to earn money by growing cabbages. Jefferson died in 1826,after which Sally Hemings was "given her time" by Jefferson's surviving daughter Martha Jefferson Randolph.
Virginia Humanities (VH),formerly the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities,is a humanities council whose stated mission is to develop the civic,cultural,and intellectual life of the Commonwealth of Virginia by creating learning opportunities for all Virginians. VH aims to bring the humanities fully into Virginia's public life,assisting individuals and communities in their efforts to understand the past,confront important issues in the present,and shape a promising future.
Edward Lynn "Ed" Ayers is an American historian,professor,administrator,and university president. In July 2013,he was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Barack Obama at a White House ceremony for Ayers's commitment “to making our history as widely available and accessible as possible." He served as the president of the Organization of American Historians in 2017–18.
Elizabeth Hemings was an enslaved mixed-race woman in colonial Virginia. With her master,planter John Wayles,she had six children,including Sally Hemings. These children were three-quarters white,and,following the condition of their mother,they were enslaved from birth;they were half-siblings to Wayles's daughter,Martha Jefferson. After Wayles died,the Hemings family and some 120 other enslaved people were inherited,along with 11,000 acres and £4,000 debt,as part of his estate by his daughter Martha and her husband Thomas Jefferson.
Harriet Hemings was born into slavery at Monticello,the home of Thomas Jefferson,third President of the United States,in the first year of his presidency. Most historians believe her father was Jefferson,who is now believed to have fathered,with his slave Sally Hemings,four children who survived to adulthood.
The treatment of slaves in the United States often included sexual abuse and rape,the denial of education,and punishments like whippings. Families were often split up by the sale of one or more members,usually never to see or hear of each other again.
James Davison Hunter is an American sociologist and originator of the term "Culture Wars" in his 1991 book Culture Wars:The Struggle to Define America. Hunter is the LaBrosse-Levinson Distinguished Professor of Religion,Culture,and Social Theory at the University of Virginia and the founder and executive director of the university's Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. He is also a senior fellow at the Trinity Forum.
Manisha Sinha is an Indian-born American historian,and the Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut. She is the author of The Slave's Cause:A History of Abolition (2016),which won the Frederick Douglass Book Prize.
Concepts of race and sexuality have interacted in various ways in different historical contexts. While partially based on physical similarities within groups,race is understood by scientists to be a social construct rather than a biological reality. Human sexuality involves biological,erotic,physical,emotional,social,or spiritual feelings and behaviors.
Laurent Dubois is the Marcello Lotti Professor of Romance Studies and History and founder of the Forum for Scholars &Publics at Duke University. His studies have focused on Haiti.
Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers is an American historian. She is an Associate Professor of History at the University of California,Berkeley,and the author of They Were Her Property:White Women as Slave Owners in the American South. She is an expert in African-American history,the history of American slavery,and women’s and gender history.
Maurie D. McInnis is an American author and cultural historian. She currently serves as the 6th president of Stony Brook University.
Ariela Julie Gross is an American historian. She is the John B. and Alice R. Sharp Professor of Law and History at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law (USC).
Katherine Olukemi Bankole-Medina is a professor of history and chair of the Department of History,Geography and Global Studies at Coppin State University. She specialises in histories of African American enslavement from a medical humanities perspective.
William Caleb McDaniel is an American historian. His book Sweet Taste of Liberty:A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for History. He is also an Associate professor of History at Rice University.
Jeff Forret is an American historian and professor at Lamar University.
Seth Rockman is an American historian. He is an associate professor of history at Brown University. He is the recipient of the Merle Curti Award and the Philip Taft Labor History Book Award for his 2009 book Scraping By:Wage Labor,Slavery,and Survival in Early Baltimore.