Profile
Amanda Bellows is historian of the United States in comparative and transnational perspective. She received her Ph.D. in History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Her first book, American Slavery and Russian Serfdom in the Post-Emancipation Imagination (University of North Carolina Press, 2020), compares representations of slavery and serfdom produced between 1861 and 1905. Her writing has appeared in the Journal of Global Slavery, Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Talking Points Memo, and the books Buying and Selling Civil War Memory in Gilded Age America, New York Times Disunion: A History of the Civil War and Disunion: Modern Historians Revisit and Reconsider the Civil War from Lincoln's Election to the Emancipation Proclamation.
Degrees Held
Ph.D. in History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2016
M.A. in History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2012
B.A. in History and Political Science, Middlebury College, 2008
Professional Affiliation
Member of the American Historical Association (2010-present)
Member of the Organization of American Historians (2016-present)
Member of the Southern Historical Association (2010-present)
Member, British American Nineteenth Century Historians (2011-present)
Member of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (2010-present)
Member of the Society of Civil War Historians (2013-present)
Member, Historians against Slavery (2015-present)
Recent Publications
Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles
“Post-Emancipation Representations of Serfs, Peasants, Slaves, and Freedpeople in Russian and American National Art, 1861—1905.” New Literary Observer/Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 6/2016: 7-25
“Selling Servitude, Captivating Consumers: Images of Bondsmen in American and Russian Advertisements, 1880—1915.” Journal of Global Slavery, 1/1: 72-112 (2016).
Book Contributions
“‘Let Us Have Peace:’ Commercial Representations of Reunion and Reconciliation after the U.S. Civil War," in Buying and Selling Civil War Memory in Gilded Age America. Edited by Caroline Janney and James Marten. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
“How the Civil War Created Football,” in The New York Times Disunion: A History of the Civil War. Edited by Ted Widmer. New York: Oxford University Press, 331-334.
“No Language Like Song,” in Disunion: Modern Scholars and Historians Revisit and Reconsider the Civil War from Lincoln’s Election to the Emancipation Proclamation. Edited by Ted Widmer. New York: New York Times and Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 2013, 205-208.
Web-Based Publications
“Why We Should Remember 1619,” Washington Post, August 18, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/08/18/why-we-should-remember/.
“Why Americans Aren’t Always Free — To Vote: A Short History of Voter Suppression in the United States,” Public Seminar, http://www.publicseminar.org/2018/11/why-americans-arent-always-free/.
"150 Cheers for the 14th Amendment," New York Times, July 9, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/08/opinion/14th-amendment-african-americans-citizenship.html.
“The First Great African-American Filmmaker: Before Spike Lee and John Singleton, there was Oscar Micheaux,” Talking Points Memo, August 18, 2016, http://talkingpointsmemo.com/longform/oscar-micheaux-african-american-film-makers.
“How the Civil War Created College Football,” New York Times, January 2, 2016, http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/01/how-the-civil-war-created-college-football/.
“Author, Author!” New York Times, March 16, 2016, http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/16/author-author/.
“No Language Like Song,” New York Times, September 16, 2011, http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/16/no-language-like-song/.
Performances and Appearances
New Books Network interview, “American Slavery and Russian Serfdom in the Post-Emancipation Imagination,” March 10, 2021, https://newbooksnetwork.com/american-slavery-and-russian-serfdom-in-the-post-emancipation-imagination.
Gilder Lehrman Book Breaks, “American Slavery and Russian Serfdom in the Post-Emancipation Imagination,” February 7, 2021, https://vimeo.com/509832547.
Public Seminar Public Program, “American Slavery and Russian Serfdom in the Post-Emancipation Imagination,” January 27, 2021 https://publicseminar.org/2021/01/american-slavery-and-russian-serfdom-in-the-post-emancipation-imagination/.
New-York Historical Society Public Program, “African American Visual Culture in the 19th Century,” December 11, 2020 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qrjp_YfgCns.
Podcast interview for “Bonded in Human Bondage: Serfdom and Slavery,” Distant Friends and Intimate Enemies: The United States and Russia Conference, The Center for Russian, Eurasian and East European Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, 2020, https://srbpodcast.org/2020/09/25/russian-serfdom-and-american-slavery/.
Podcast interview for “Slavery and Its Legacies, The Gilder Lehrman Center (GLC) for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, 2018, Yale University, https://slaveryanditslegacies.yale.edu/news/dr-amanda-bellows-american-slavery-and-russian-serfdom-after-emancipation.
Research Interests
Research interests: Nineteenth-century U.S. history in comparative and transnational perspective, slavery/emancipation, memory, and popular culture.
Awards And Honors
2020 University of North Carolina Press, Author’s Fund Award.
2019 British Library, Eccles Centre Visiting U.S. Fellow in North American Studies.
2018 Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University, One-Month Research Fellowship.
2016 Bernard and Irene Schwartz Postdoctoral Fellowship, New York Historical Society and Eugene Lang College at the New School.
2014 National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Scholar, CUNY Grad Center, July 2016.
2013 Advanced Research Fellowship, American Councils Title VIII Research Scholar Grant, funded by the U.S. Department of State.