Director: Janet T. Marquardt, PhD., Professor of Art History and Women’s Studies humanitiescenter@eiu.edu
Doudna Fine Arts Center 1343
(217) 581-3968 (Office)
(217) 581-3917 (College of Arts & Humanities)
Faculty Affiliates of the Center for the Humanities
My scholarship and teaching activities focus on the eighteenth century Black Atlantic. As a social historian I am especially interested in how individuals accommodate themselves to larger societal forces and how identities are transformed. I have been characterized as an Early Americanist, an Atlantic historian, a historian of race and a maritime historian. My articles on black seamen have appeared in Early American Studies, Common-place, Slavery and Abolition, Journal for Maritime Research, the Proceedings of the 2007 Naval History Symposium, Seaport, and Gender, Race, Ethnicity and Power in Maritime America. In addition to my book project, “Liberty’s Labyrinth: Freedom in the 18th Century Black Atlantic,” I continue to work on the development of a Black Mariner Database that as of 2012 contains records on more than 22,000 black mariners and black maritime fugitives. My essay "Sewing a Safety Net: Scarborough's Maritime Community, 1747-1765" in the June 2012 issue of the International Maritime History Journal analyzes how the maritime community of Scarborough, England employed both the governmentally mandated Seamen's Sixpence program and local kinship networks to form a social safety net protecting the port's maritime dependents.
Frequently Taught Courses
HIS 1510G Slavery and Freedom
HIS 2010G US History to 1877
HIS 3380 Golden Age of Piracy
HIS 4303 Colonial History
HIS 4304 Revolutionary America to 1789
HIS 4350 Lasky Seminar in Early United States History
HIS 5160 Atlantic World
HIS 5370 Early America
Education
Ph.D., Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ
Research
Early American History
Atlantic History
African-American History
Slavery in the Americas
Maritime History
Publications
"The End of the Seven Years War: Celebration or Concern for Rhode Island's Blacks?" John Carter Brown Library Fellows' 50th Anniversary Conference, June 8, 2012. Click here to view the presentation.
