Department of History

Gloria Whiting

Position title: E. Gordon Fox Associate Professor of History

Email: gwhiting@wisc.edu

Phone: 608.263.1851

Address:
Office: 5108 Mosse Humanities
Mailbox: 5019 Mosse Humanities
Office Hours: TBA

Gloria Whiting

Biography

I am a historian of ordinary people and their everyday experiences in early America. I have a particular interest in the lives of those who encountered various forms of oppression, such as women, the impoverished, and people of color. My work so far has focused specifically on the history of Afro-New Englanders, who were subjected to bondage, violence, and discrimination despite living in a region that is often celebrated for its legacy of liberty. How, I ask, did Blackness define and constrain these people’s lives? And to what extent did people of African descent manage to manipulate their circumstances to bring about change in the communities in which they lived?

My first book answers these questions through the lens of intimacy. Titled Belonging: An Intimate History of Slavery and Family in Early New England, it traces the contours of enslaved people’s families, arguing that the actions taken by people in bondage to fortify their kin communities played a pivotal role in bringing about the collapse of slavery in New England’s most populous state, Massachusetts. Belonging recently received the 2025 AHA Prize in American History for outstanding first book on any subject relating to United States history published in 2023 or 2024. The book has also been awarded the John Winthrop Prize for the best book on the seventeenth century by the Colonial Society of Massachusetts; the Peter J. Gomes Memorial Book Prize for the best book on the history of Massachusetts by the Massachusetts Historical Society; and the Frances Richardson Keller-Sierra Prize for the best historical monograph published in 2024 by the Western Association of Women Historians. In addition, Belonging was shortlisted for the Stone Book Award given by the Museum of African American History, and the book is at present a finalist for the Frederick Douglass Award for outstanding work on slavery, freedom, or abolition.

I am now at work on a second book. Titled Race and Policing in America’s Founding Era, this book explores systems of community vigilantism, municipal surveillance, and colonial governance in the early North, all of which worked together to monitor and control people of African descent. My research indicates that the history of racialized policing, and the assumptions about Black criminality that justified it, are older and more deeply rooted in the North than historians suppose. White New Englanders were apprehending Black people on the streets by the opening years of the eighteenth century—a reality that shaped slavery, freedom, and Black mobility in early America.

I am also leading a major public-facing digital humanities project on liberty, slavery, and the American Revolution. Titled “Freedom Seekers: Stories of Black Liberation in the American Revolutionary Era and Beyond,” this project is timed to culminate in 2026, when the United States will celebrate the 250th anniversary of its independence. By researching and writing the stories of hundreds of diverse runaways, contributors aim to help Americans understand that white Patriots were by no means alone in their struggle to realize what Thomas Jefferson immortalized in the Declaration of Independence as “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Countless people of color fled slavery during the American Revolution, determined, no matter the cost, to seek independence of their own.

Education

Ph.D., History, Harvard University
M.A., History, Harvard University
B.A., History, English, and Policy Studies, Rice University

Books

Selected Publications

Journal Articles

  • “Emancipation without the Courts or Constitution: The Case of Revolutionary Massachusetts,” Slavery & Abolition (September 2020): 458–78.
  • “Race, Slavery, and the Problem of Numbers in Early New England: A View from Probate Court,” William and Mary Quarterly (July 2020): 405–40.
    • Winner of the 2021 William Nelson Cromwell Foundation Article Prize from the American Society for Legal History for the best article in American legal history published in the preceding calendar year by an early career scholar.
    • Featured in JOTWELL, a journal that celebrates “the best new scholarship relevant to the law,” for its “insights into… scholarly debates regarding the utility of quantitative analysis for historians of slavery.”
  • “Power, Patriarchy, and Provision: African Families Negotiate Gender and Slavery in New England,” Journal of American History 103 no. 3 (December 2016): 583–605.

Digital Humanities Work

  • “Freedom Seekers: Stories of Black Liberation in the American Revolutionary Era and Beyond.” This public-facing community-sourced digital humanities project will eventually contain hundreds of short histories of enslaved people who seized their liberty. As the United States approaches 2026 and the semiquincentennial of its independence, the project aims to show an audience extending far beyond the academy that those who sought to unshackle themselves from slavery are crucial actors in the American story of freedom. The project can be found online at www.freedom-seekers.org.
  • “Letitia,” published on “Freedom Seekers: Stories of Black Liberation in the American Revolutionary Era and Beyond,” July 4, 2024, www.freedom-seekers.org/story/letitia/.
  • “Penelope,” published on “Freedom Seekers: Stories of Black Liberation in the American Revolutionary Era and Beyond,” July 4, 2024, www.freedom-seekers.org/story/penelope/.
  • “Pompey Fleet,” published on “Freedom Seekers: Stories of Black Liberation in the American Revolutionary Era and Beyond,” July 4, 2024, www.freedom-seekers.org/story/pompey/.

Advisor To

Selected Awards

  • Vilas Associates Award, UW–Madison, 2024–2026
  • AHA Prize in American History for outstanding first book on any subject relating to United States history, 2025
  • John Winthrop Prize for the best book on the seventeenth century, Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 2025
  • Frances Richardson Keller-Sierra Prize for the best single-authored historical monograph, Western Association of Women Historians, 2025
  • Peter J. Gomes Memorial Book Prize, Massachusetts Historical Society, 2025
  • Finalist, Frederick Douglass Book Prize, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University, 2025
  • Shortlist, Stone Book Award, Museum of African American History, 2025
  • Research Award, Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, UW–Madison, 2024–2025
  • Fall Competition Award, Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education with funding from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, UW–Madison, 2018–2019, 2019–2020, 2020–2021, 2021–2022, 2022–2023, and 2023–2024
  • University Housing Honored Instructor Award for outstanding classroom teaching, UW–Madison, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2022
  • Dorothy and Hsin–Nung Yao Teaching Award, UW–Madison Department of History, 2020
  • William Nelson Cromwell Foundation Prize for the best article in American legal history, American Society for Legal History, 2021
  • Distinguished Honors Faculty Award Recipient, UW–Madison Letters & Science Honors Program, 2019
  • Race, Ethnicity, and Indigeneity Fellowship, UW–Madison Institute for Research in the Humanities, 2019
  • First Book Award, UW–Madison Center for the Humanities, 2017
  • Outstanding Instructor Award, Tri–Delta Sorority (Mu Chapter) of UW–Madison, 2016
  • Dissertation Completion Fellowship, Charles Warren Center, Harvard University, 2014–2015
  • Grant for Innovative Graduate Research, Center for American Political Studies, Harvard University, 2014, 2015
  • New England Regional Consortium Fellowship Grant, 2012–2013
  • Kate B. and Hall J. Peterson Fellowship, American Antiquarian Society, 2012–2013
  • Michael Kraus Research Grant in Colonial History, American Historical Association, 2012
  • Artemas Ward Fellowship for Dissertation Research, Harvard University, 2011–2014
  • Richard A. Berenson Graduate Fellowship, Harvard University, 2010–2013
  • Jacquelyn Dowd Hall Prize, Southern Association for Women Historians, 2009

History Courses