Graduate Studies at Vanderbilt - The History of the Atlantic World
Vanderbilt ranks among the nation's top twenty research universities and boasts a diverse and dynamic History Department. One of the newest and most exciting areas of faculty research and graduate training at Vanderbilt is the History of the Atlantic World. Graduate students who choose to complete a major or minor field in Atlantic World history at Vanderbilt will be introduced to a wide range of literatures addressing the interactions among European, Native American, and African peoples. The following faculty forms the core of our Atlantic World program: Richard J. M. Blackett , Celso Castilho, Lauren Clay, James A. Epstein, Peter Hudson, Jane Landers, Catherine Molineux, and Daniel Usner.
NEWS: Richard Blackett, Andrew Jackson Professor of History, Teresa Goddu, Associate Professor of English and Director of American Studies and Jane Landers, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of History have been awarded a $146,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to convene a year-long Sawyer Seminar in the academic year 2012-13 entitled “The Age of Emancipation: Black Freedom in the Atlantic World.” The seminar will place the U.S. Emancipation Proclamation (January 1, 1863) within the broader Atlantic emancipation processes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and draw on Vanderbilt faculty who study slavery and abolition, including members of the history department Catherine Molineux, Celso Castilho, James Epstein, and Lauren Clay, among others.
Richard Blackett has been named the Harmsworth Visiting Professor of American History at Oxford University for the year 2013-14.
Related Faculty from Other Departments
In addition to the eight faculty members who form the core of the Atlantic World History cluster, graduate students may work with faculty from other Vanderbilt departments with related interests. These include professors in the Spanish and Portuguese department: Earl Fitz, , William Luis, Emanuelle Oliveira; professors in the English department: Gabriel Cervantes, Colin Dayan, Teresa Goddu, and Ifeoma Nwankwo; professors in the Anthropology department: William Fowler and Steve Wernke; and from the Program of African American and Diaspora Studies: Tiffany Patterson and Jemima Pierre.
Related Resources on Campus
Circum-Atlantic Studies Working Group (CASS)
In 2001, Sean Goudie (English) and Jane Landers (History) created the Circum-Atlantic Studies Working Group with funding from the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities. Now in its tenth year, and re-named the Circum-Atlantic Studies Seminar (CASS), this group meets monthly to read and discuss works-in-progress authored by participants. Participants' scholarship is interdisciplinary in nature, focusing on at least two of the following regions-Africa, Europe, Latin and Central America, the Caribbean, and North America-and treating some aspect of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, colonialism, and/or post colonialism. Seminar coordinators: Jane Landers and Celso Castilho. To see the list of speakers since 2002 click here.
Black Atlantic VANDERBILT HISTORY SEMINAR
In 2003, the History Department launched a Black Atlantic History Seminar to showcase the research of Vanderbilt faculty as well as visiting faculty working in the field. In 2007 the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities assumed full support for this annual event, allowing us to create the Black Atlantic History Lecture Series. Noted speakers in the series have included David Eltis (Emory University), Christopher Brown (Rutgers University), Philip Morgan (the Johns Hopkins University) and Vincent Brown (Duke University), to name only a few. To see a complete list of speakers click here.
Africa in the Atlantic World
In 2010 CASS launched a new speakers’ series dedicated to scholarship on Africa in the Atlantic World. Support for this series comes from the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities, the History Department, the Africa Speakers’Series, the Program in African and African American Studies, and the Bishop Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center. Past speakers have included Mariza de Carvalho Soares (Universidade Federal Fluminese), Yacine Daddi Addoun (University of Kansas), Mariana Candido (Princeton Univeristy), Mamadou Diouf (Columbia University), Toyin Falola (University of Texas, Austin).
Brazil in the Atlantic World Speakers’ Series
Cuba in the Atlantic World Speakers’ Series
Departmental and Center Speakers on Atlantic World
Through the Byrn Lecture and the Vanderbilt History Seminar, the History Department also regularly hosts speakers on the Atlantic World, as do other programs and Centers across campus. Past departmental speakers on the Atlantic World have included:Robin Blackburn ( Essex University); Trevor Burnard (University of Warwick) Paul Lovejoy (York University),Canada; Peter Mancall ( University of Southern California); Joseph Miller, (University of Virginia); Madison Samrtt Bell (Goucher College), and Daniel Richter( McNeil Center for Early American Studies), University of Pennsylvania, to name a few.
Related Centers
Vanderbilt University is also home to a number of exciting interdisciplinary programs that promote curriculum and programming related to Atlantic World History. These include:
The Bishop Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center
The Center for European Studies
The Center for Latin American Studies
The Program in African American and Diaspora Studies
Undergraduate courses in Atlantic World History
137 Colonial Latin America
138 Modern Latin America
243W English Atlantic World, 1500-1688
244 Rise of the Iberian Atlantic Empires, 1492-1700
245 Decline of the Iberian Atlantic Empires, 1700-1820
246 Colonial Mexico
247 Modern Mexico
249 Brazilian Civilization
251 Reform and Revolution in Latin America
253a Latin America and the United States
254a Race and Nation in Latin America
257 Caribbean History, 1492-1983
260 North American Colonial History
295 Topics over recent years have included:
Comparative Slavery
Early America
U.S. and the Caribbean in the 20th Century
The Caribbean Since 1945
New Worlds, New Bodies
Picturing Race
Pirates of the Caribbean
Indians in Early North America
Slavery and Abolition
Graduate courses in Atlantic World History
303a. Readings in Colonial Latin American History
303b. Readings in Modern Latin American History
359 Atlantic World History, 15th to the 19th c
361 Topics in Latin American History
365 Seminar in Latin American History
371 Studies in Early American History to 1783
