
American Philosophical Society Fellowship, May - August 2021
Baylor University
My research embraces a transnational approach to African American history in the early United States, with specializations in diplomacy, race, and religion. I am currently writing a book on racialized U.S. diplomacy with Haiti from the American Revolution through Reconstruction. The study also examines the impact of Haitian immigration on early U.S. religion and culture. I have published articles, essays, and reviews in Early American Studies, Diplomatic History, the Journal of African American History, the Journal of Caribbean History, Baptist History & Heritage, and the American Historical Review.
Project Title: Edward Stevens: A Checkered History in Black Freedom & Atlantic Slavery
Edward Stevens FRSE, a University of Edinburgh alumnus, was an Atlantic world physician and diplomat who accumulated a muddled record on slavery across the Caribbean. My project examines the influence of university faculty, classmates, and the city of Edinburgh on Stevens’s discordant practices involving race and Atlantic slavery.
Books
- Diplomacy in Black and White: John Adams, Toussaint Louverture, and Their Atlantic World Alliance (UGA Press, 2014)
- In Search of Liberty: African American Internationalism During the Nineteenth Century, edited with Ousmane Power-Greene (UGA Press), forthcoming.
Selected Articles
- “Africans and Immigrants: Haitian Contributions to the African Protestant Movement in Early America,” Revue Française d’Études Américaines 164 (2020): 38-57.
- “‘A Very Curious Game’: The Racialized Public Diplomacy of Toussaint Louverture in the United States,” Journal of Caribbean History 53, no. 1. (2019): 82-116.
- “Haiti's Connection to Early America: Beyond the Revolution,” History Compass 16, no. 3 (2018), DOI 10.1111/hic3.12442.
Selected Book Chapters
- “Natural Rights: Haitian-American Diplomacy in the Age of Atlantic Revolutions,” in A Companion to U.S. Foreign Policy, Colonial Era to the Present, ed. Christopher Dietrich (Wiley-Blackwell, 2020), I, 93-112.
- “Enslaved by History: Slavery’s Enduring Influence on the Memory of Pierre Toussaint,” in Traces and Memories of Slavery in the Atlantic World, ed. Lawrence Aje and Nicolas Gachon (Routledge, 2019), 170-187.