Adam Rothman
Associate Professor
Department of History
Georgetown University
37th & O St., NW
Washington, DC 20057-1035
(202) 687-8988
ar44@georgetown.edu
Teaching Experience
Fall 2005Associate Professor, Department of History, Georgetown University
2000-2005
Assistant Professor, Department of History, Georgetown University
1999-2000
Preceptor, Contemporary Civilization, Columbia University
Education:
2000
1996
1995
1993
Ph.D. in American History, Columbia University, New York
Dissertation: “The Expansion of Slavery in the Deep South, 1790-1820.”
M.Phil. in American History, Columbia University, New York
M.A. in American History, Columbia University, New York
B.A. in History, Yale University, New Haven
Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa, Distinction in the Major
Publications
Books
Beyond Freedom’s Reach: A Kidnapping in the Twilight of Slavery (Harvard University
Press, 2015)
Major Problems in Atlantic History, with Alison Games (Houghton Mifflin, 2008)
Slave Country: American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South (Harvard
University Press, 2005). Paperback edition published in 2007.
Work in Progress
Emancipation in the United States (Harvard University Press, under contract)
Global America, with Joyce Chaplin, Ian Tyrrell, and Akira Iriye (W.W. Norton, under
contract)
Articles and book chapters
“The Paracolonial Republic and the War of 1812,” in Jean-Marc Serme, ed. 1812 in the
Americas (Cambridge Scholarly Publishing, 2015)
“Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Eugene Genovese, and the Proslavery Worldview,” Reviews in
American History 41.3 (2013): 563-569
“Slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction,” in Eric Foner and Lisa McGirr, eds. The
Rothman CV, p. 2
New American History (Temple University Press, 2011)
“The South in the Ages of the Revolution and the Early Republic,” in Daniel Letwin, ed.
The American South: A Reader and Guide (Edinburgh University Press, 2011)
“Jefferson and slavery,” in John B. Boles and Randal L. Hall, eds. Seeing Jefferson
Anew: In His Time and Ours (University of Virginia Press, 2010)
“Slavery and national expansion in the United States,” OAH Magazine of History 23:2
(April 2009): 23-29
“Beyond the Textbook: Slavery,” National History Education Clearinghouse,
http://teachinghistory.org/history-content/beyond-the-textbook/23905
“Lafcadio Hearn in New Orleans and the Caribbean,” Atlantic Studies 5:2 (2008): 265283
“Beware the Weak State,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d Ser., 64:2 (April 2007): 271274.
“Hurricane Katrina and the burdens of history,” History Compass 4:2 (2006)
“This Guilty Land,” Reviews in American History 33.3 (2005): 301-308
"The 'Slave Power' in the United States," in Steve Fraser and Gary Gerstle, eds. Ruling
America (Harvard University Press, 2005)
"The Domestication of the Slave Trade in the United States," in Walter Johnson, ed., The
Chattel Principle (Yale University Press, 2005)
Reference works
Associate Editor, Princeton Encyclopedia of United States Political History, Ed. by
Michael Kazin (Princeton University Press, 2009)
Recent book reviews
Review of Cécile Vidal, ed., Louisiana: Crossroads of the Atlantic World. Slavery &
Abolition 36:1 (2015)
Review of Lawrence Powell, The Accidental City: Improvising New Orleans. American
Historical Review 118.4 (2013)
Review of Robert Bonner, Mastering America: Southern Slaveholders and the Crisis of
American Nationhood. American Historical Review 114:5 (Dec. 2009)
Review of Mariana L.R. Dantas, Black Townsmen: Urban Slavery and Freedom in the
Eighteenth-Century Americas. Hispanic American Historical Review 89:4 (November
Rothman CV, p. 3
2009)
Review of Ernest Obadele-Starks, Freebooters and Smugglers: The Foreign Slave Trade
to the United States after 1808. Journal of Southern History 75:2 (May 2009)
Review of John Craig Hammond, Slavery, Freedom, and Expansion in the Early
American West. American Historical Review 114:1 (February 2009)
Other publications
“The horrors ’12 Years a Slave’ couldn’t tell.” Al Jazeera America, January 18, 2014.
“The name of war.” Disunion blog. New York Times, August 17, 2013, co-authored with
Chandra Manning.
“Django Unchained’s Bloody Real History in Mississippi.” Daily Beast, February 24,
2013.
“Our servants do pretty much as they please.” Disunion blog, New York Times, June 1,
2012.
"Bet Noire: New Orleans and the Culture of Gambling." The New Republic Online 5 Sep.
2005.
Conference papers and lectures
“The Kidnapping of Slaves and Freed People in Louisiana during the Civil War,”
Louisiana Historical Association Annual Meeting, Lafayette, LA, March 2015, and
Human Trafficking in Early America, McNeil Center for Early American Studies
Conference, April 2015
“The Last Slaves of New Orleans,” American Historical Association Annual Meeting,
January 2015.
“The Declaration of Independence and the Fight Against Slavery,” Freedom Lecture,
Federal Housing Finance Agency, January 29, 2014
“The paracolonial republic,” Keynote address, 1812 in the Americas, Université de
Bretagne Occidentale, Brest, France, June 7, 2012
“Rose Herera,” Organization of American Historians Annual Meeting, Milwaukee, WI,
April 2012.
“Occupy New Orleans, 1862,” Phi Alpha Theta Luncheon Address, Louisiana Historical
Association Annual Meeting, New Orleans, March 3, 2012
“Trust, loyalty, and betrayal in Afro-Atlantic slave resistance,” Black Resistance in an
Age of Revolution: A Symposium Commemorating the Bicentennial of the 1811 Louisiana
Rothman CV, p. 4
Slave Revolt, Tulane University, October 13, 2011
“Union, empire, and slavery in the United States, 1763-1865,” New Nations in a New
World: The Americas, 1750-1870, Georgetown University, March 18, 2011; and Latin
American Studies Annual Meeting, San Francisco, May 24, 2012
“Slavery and environmental management in the lower Mississippi valley,” Southern
Historical Association, Charlotte, NC, November 5, 2010
“The Kidnapping of Rose Herrera’s children, or the twilight of slavery in New Orleans,”
Louisiana Historical Association, Lafayette, LA, March 26, 2010
“Choice and force in the Louisiana Purchase,” New Approaches to Capitalism and
Imperialism in U.S. History, Harvard University, April 10, 2009
“Coerced Migration in the Making of Louisiana and Trinidad.” Omohundro Institute for
Early American History and Culture Annual Meeting, June 2007.
“Lafcadio Hearn in Louisiana and the Caribbean,” Atlantic Studies Workshop, LSU,
Baton Rouge, LA, April 26, 2007.
“Jefferson and Slavery,” Thomas Jefferson in His Time and Ours, Rice University,
Houston, TX, February 23-24, 2007
“Reflections on W.E.B. DuBois’s Supression of the African Slave-Trade to the United
States,” American Historical Association Annual Meeting, January 2007
“The U.S. Civil War in World History,” Heyburn Lecture, Milton Academy, Milton, MA,
November 30, 2005
“‘The Great South Gate’: The Political Economy of New Orleans in the 19th Century,”
presented at the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History, November 29,
2005
"Servile deceit and the limits of slave resistance in the United States," presented at the
Southern Historical Association Annual Meeting, Memphis, TN, November 2004.
"A transnational history of the early United States, 1783-1819," presented at the Society
for Historians of the Early American Republic Annual Meeting, Providence, RI, July
2004.
Courses
History 007 History of the Atlantic World
History 281 Rising Empire: The US from 1783 to 1848
History 286 North American Slavery
History 296 The American Crisis, 1848-1877
Rothman CV, p. 5
History 380 History of New Orleans
History 395 Society & Politics in Jeffersonian America
History 396 Society & Politics in Jacksonian America
History 410 The African Atlantic
History 501 Doctoral Core Colloqium
History 684 Slavery and Abolition in the Atlantic World
History 789 The United States from Revolution to Reconstruction
Awards and fellowships:
2008 Georgetown Senior Faculty Grant
2008 Georgetown University Summer Academic Grant
2003 Georgetown University Summer Academic Grant
2002 ACLS/Oscar Handlin Fellowship
2002 Georgetown Junior Faculty Research Grant
2001 Georgetown University Summer Academic Grant
2000 Bancroft Dissertation Prize, Columbia University
1998 Mrs. Giles Whiting Fellow, Columbia University
1998 Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching by Graduate Students, Columbia
University
Digital projects:
Transatlantic Slave Trade Visualization, with Matthew Burdumy, April 2015
Other
2007-2011
2004-2007
Lead Historian, Teaching American History Grant. Montgomery County
(Md.) Public Schools and the Center for History and New Media, George
Mason University
Nineteenth Century North America section editor, History Compass
Professional organizations
Member AHA, OAH, SHA
Service: Membership Committee, OAH; Chair, OAH Merle Curti Prize Committee 20123; OAH Program Committee for 2014; Deputy Washington Liaison, 2014SHA Program Committee for 2013; SHA Jack Temple Kirby Prize Committee for 2013;
2014 Bancroft Prize Committee.