Stephen Kantrowitz
Professor

eMail: skantrow@wisc.edu
Phone: (608)263-1844
Office: 5110 Mosse Humanities
Mailbox: 5017 Mosse Humanities

Curriculum Vitae: View PDF

Office Hours: Mondays 11:00 - 12:00 & 1:00 - 2:00

Education: PhD: Princeton; MA: Princeton; BA: Yale

Bio Sketch:

I am a historian of the United States, specializing in the nineteenth century. My research and teaching center on the ways Americans understood and experienced slavery and emancipation; in particular, I am interested in issues of political activity, racial ideology and racial conflict, and the ways politics and race have been gendered. After a decade of research on the politics of white supremacy in the post-Civil War South—which produced my book, Ben Tillman and the Reconstruction of White Supremacy -- I have shifted focus to explore the political lives of Boston's black activists during the middle and later decades of the nineteenth century. This work will be published by Penguin Press in their new series, The Penguin History of American Life, and is tentatively entitled "Colored Citizens: Boston's Black Activists Confront Slavery and Freedom, 1840-1890".

I regularly teach undergraduate and graduate courses on the Civil War era and on topics that draw in issues of race, gender, and citizenship. I have also helped design and lead several field courses focusing on the American South, including 2001's "Freedom Ride" summer course and a 2004 follow-up visit to Selma, Alabama and the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute.

I received my Ph.D. from Princeton in 1995, where I worked with Nell Irvin Painter, Daniel Rodgers, and James McPherson. I have been a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study (2002-03) and the UW Institute for Research in the Humanities (2001).

In 2007 I was named a Hamel Family Faculty Fellow and an Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer.

Research Interests:

Reconstruction (North and South); race and politics; white supremacy; citizenship; free black and black Northern life; Southern history; masculinity.

Selected Publications:

• "Brotherhood Denied: Black Freemasonry and the Limits of Reconstruction," in Donald Yacavone, ed., "All Men are Free and are Brethren: Prince Hall and African American Fraternalism (forthcoming from Cornell University press)
• "A Place for 'Colored Patriots': Crispus Attucks Among the Abolitionists, 1842-1863," Massachusetts Historical Review (spring 2009)
• “Fighting Like Men: Civil War Dilemmas of Abolitionist Manhood,” in Catherine Clinton and Nina Silber, eds., Battle Scars: Gender and Sexuality in the U.S. Civil War (Oxford University Press, 2006).
• Ben Tillman and the Reconstruction of White Supremacy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000). 422pp., cloth and paper (3rd paperback printing, 2004). For book awards, see below.
• "Youngest Living Carpetbagger Tells All, or How Regional Myopia Created 'Pitchfork Ben' Tillman," Southern Cultures 8.3 (fall 2002), 18-37.
• "Ben Tillman and Hendrix McLane, Agrarian Rebels: White Manhood, 'The Farmers,' and the Limits of Southern Populism," The Journal of Southern History LXVI (August 2000), 497-524.
• "One Man's Mob is Another Man's Militia: Violence, Manhood, and Authority in Reconstruction South Carolina" in Jane Dailey, Glenda Gilmore, and Bryant Simon, eds., Jumpin' Jim Crow: Southern Politics from Civil War to Civil Rights (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 2000), 67-87.
• "The Two Faces of Domination in North Carolina, 1800-1898" in David Cecelski and Timothy B. Tyson, eds., Democracy Betrayed: The Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 and Its Legacy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 95-112.
• "White Supremacist Justice and the Rule of Law: Lynching, Honor, and the State in Ben Tillman's South Carolina" in Pieter Spierenburg, ed., Men and Violence: Masculinity, Honor Codes and Violent Rituals in Europe and America (Ohio State University Press, 1998), 213-239.

Awards:

Book Awards:

• Ellis W. Hawley Book Prize, Organization of American Historians, 2001
• Outstanding Achievement, Wisconsin Library Association, 2001
• George C. Rogers, Jr. Book Prize, South Carolina Historical Society, 2000
• New York Times Book Review Notable Book for 2000

Teaching Awards:

• Chancellor's Award for Distinguished Teaching, 2001
• Mark H. Ingraham Distinguished Faculty Award, 2001
• Outstanding Credit Program, North Amer. Assoc. of Summer Sessions, 2001
• Karen F. Johnson Award for Undergraduate Teaching in History, 2000

Courses Taught:

Lecture Courses:

• History 150 - American Histories: 19th Century - Syllabus 2009 (pdf)
• History 258 - American South (not recently offered)
• History 393 - Civil War Era, 1848-1877 - Syllabus 2006 (pdf)

Undergraduate Seminars:

• History 283 - Honors Seminar - Topics: "Slave Revolts in the Americas" - Syllabus 2009 (pdf)
• History 500 - Reading Seminar in History - Topics: "Race in North America; Slavery and Freedom, 1840-1880"
• History 600 - Advanced Seminar in History - Topics: "The Right to Vote" - Syllabus 2008 (pdf); "Selma and America" - Syllabus 2004 (pdf); "Slavery and Antislavery; White Supremacy"; "American Anti-Slavery Movements" - Syllabus 2007 (pdf)

Graduate Courses:

• History 900 - Introduction to History for American Historians - Syllabus 2006 (pdf)
• History 901 - Studies in American History - Topics: "Slavery and Freedom, North and South" - Syllabus 2004 (pdf); "Southern History; Populism and 'The People'"
• History 902 - Research Seminar: American History
• History 925 - Seminar: American History in the Civil War Era - Topic: "Slavery, Politics, and Citizenship in 19th-Century America" - Syllabus 2007 (pdf); "Slaves' Politics and the Politics of Slavery" Syllabus 2009 (pdf)