Nicholas Wood
Fields & Specialties
Slavery and Abolitionism in the early republicEDUCATION
Ph.D. American History: University of Virginia, expected 2013
Dissertation: “Questions of Humanity and Expediency: The Slave Trades and the African Colonization Movement in the Early Republic”
Advisor: Peter S. Onuf
M.A. American History: Rutgers University, Camden, May 2007
Thesis: “Non-Importation not Abolition: The Importance of Commercial Language in the United States Prohibition of the African Slave Trade”
Advisor: Andrew S. Shankman
M.Ed. Social Studies Education: Rutgers University, New Brunswick, May 2003
B.A. History: Rutgers University, New Brunswick, May 2002
Honors Program Thesis: “No Man Can Serve Two Masters: The Dilemma of Wesleyan-Methodist Missionaries in Pre-Emancipation Jamaica”
Advisor: Christopher L. Brown
JOURNAL ARTICLES
“‘A Sacrifice on the Altar of Slavery:’ Doughface Politics and Black Disenfranchisement in Pennsylvania, 1837-1838,” Journal of the Early Republic 31 (Spring 2011):75-105
“John Randolph and the Politics of Slavery in the Early Republic,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 120 (Summer 2012):106-143
ARTICLES IN PROGRESS
“The Missouri Crisis and the ‘Changed Object’ of the American Colonization Society,” in Reconsiderations and Redirections in the Study of African Colonization, eds. Beverly C. Tomek and Matthew J. Hetrick, (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, forthcoming)
“A Mulatto’s Dinner at Monticello: The Jefferson Image, Racial Science, and Antislavery Violence in Jabez D. Hammond’s Abolitionist Fiction” (revising for resubmission)
BOOK REVIEWS
Colonization and Its Discontents: Emancipation, Emigration, and Antislavery in Antebellum Pennsylvania, by Beverly Tomek, in Pennsylvania History 79 (Spring 2012):252-54
Slaves for Hire: Renting Enslaved Labor in Antebellum Virginia, by John J. Zaborney, in Journal of the Early Republic (forthcoming, Fall 2013)
CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS
“The Interracial Abolitionist Collaborations of Cato Collins and John Parrish,” presented at the (forthcoming) annual meeting of the Pennsylvania Historical Association, Gettysburg, October 1719, 2013. Comment by Beverly Tomek.
“Natural Rights, the Golden Rule, and Divine Retribution in Early National Slave Trade Debates,” presented at the (forthcoming) annual meeting of the Omohundro Institute for Early American History and Culture, Baltimore, June 13-15, 2013. Comment by Christopher L. Brown and Richard S. Newman.
“Barbary Captivity, National Power, and the Defense of Slavery and the Slave Trade,” presented at the annual meeting of the Southern Historical Association, Baltimore, October 2011. Comment by John Craig Hammond
“The Eclipse of Moderation: African Colonization and the Missouri Crisis,” presented at the (forthcoming) annual meeting of the Society of Historians of the Early American Republic, Philadelphia, July 2011. Comment by John Craig Hammond and Eva Sheppard Wolf
“Transatlantic Abolitionism in the Late Eighteenth Century,” presented at the Virginia Forum, Lexington VA, March 25, 2011. Comment by the audience
“Slavery, Security, and Sovereignty in the Orleans Territory, 1803-1812,” presented at the annual meeting of the Omohundro Institute for Early American History and Culture, Oxford, Mississippi, June 13, 2010. Comment by Anthony Parent
“‘A Sacrifice on the Altar of Slavery:’ The 1838 Disfranchisement of Black Pennsylvanians,” presented at the annual meeting of the Society of Historians of the Early American Republic, Springfield, Illinois, July 19, 2009. Comment by Margot Minardi
“Melbourne’s Dinner at Monticello: Fiction as History and Thomas Jefferson as We Wish He Were,” presented at the annual University of Virginia History Graduate Student Conference, Charlottesville, Virginia, April 19, 2009. Comment by Whitney Martinko
“Non-Importation not Abolition: The Importance of Commercial Language in the United States’ Prohibition of the African Slave Trade,” presented at The Closing of the Slave Trades: Transatlantic Perspectives, cosponsored by the Gilder-Lehrman Center and Queens University, Belfast, Northern Ireland, May 29, 2008. Comment by David W. Blight and Catherine Clinton
“Sin Against Heaven” or Commercial Violation? The Language of British and American Prohibition of the Slave Trade,” presented at The Abolition of the British Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: Telling the Story, College of the Bahamas at Nassau, February 22, 2008. Comment by Evelyn McCollin
OTHER PRESENTATIONS
“Slave Resistance and Virtue in Antislavery Thought during the Age of Revolution,” presented at the (forthcoming) workshop, “The Age of Emancipation: Black Freedom in the Atlantic World,” at Vanderbilt University’s Robert Penn Warren Center, April 26-27, 2013. Moderated by Richard J.M. Blackett, Teresa A. Goddu, and Jane G. Landers.
“Barbary Slavery, American Freedom: Race, National Power, and Natural Rights in the New Nation,” presented at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, March 23, 2012. Moderated by Daniel Richter
“Questioning the Morality and Expediency of Slavery in Jeffersonian Virginia,” presented as part of the forum, William Short’s Emancipation Proposal to Thomas Jefferson, at the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies, May 17, 2011, and televised on CSPAN-3, July 17, 2011. Comment by Annette Gordon-Reed
“John Randolph and the Politics of Slavery in Jeffersonian America,” presented at the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies, Fellow’s Forum, October 26, 2010. Moderated by Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
Adjunct Instructor, UVA, HIUS 3051: The Age of Jefferson & Jackson, Spring 2013
Graduate TA, UVA, HIUS 3051: The Age of Jefferson & Jackson, Spring 2011
Adjunct Instructor, UVA, HIUS 4501: Slavery and Antislavery in America, Fall 2010
Graduate TA, UVA, HIUS 2501: US Military History 1600-1900, Fall 2009
Graduate TA, UVA, HIUS 3671: History of the Civil Rights Movement, Spring 2009
Graduate TA, UVA, HIUS 313: Emergence of Modern America 1870-1930, Fall 2008
Instructor, UVA School of Continuing Education, James Monroe Lectures, Fall 2008
High School Teacher, Monroe Township High School, NJ, World History , 2003-2004
High School Teacher, Monroe Township High School, NJ, US History II, 2003-2004
DISSERTATION FELLOWSHIPS
UVA-Monticello Early American Seminar, Dissertation Fellow, 2012-2013
McNeil Center for Early American Studies, Dissertation Fellow, 2011-2012
RESEARCH GRANTS AND HONORS
Huntington Library, Robert L. Middlekauff Fellowship, June 2012
Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, short term research fellowship, Fall 2011
Library Company of Philadelphia and Historical Society of Pennsylvania, June 2011
Robert H. Smith International Center for Jeffersonian Studies Fellowship, October 2010
University of Virginia, Huskey Travel Fund Award, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011
University of Virginia, J. Carl Sewell III Fellowship, Spring 2010
University of Virginia, History Department Fellowship, 2007-2010
Rutgers Alumni Award for Academic Achievement, 2007
Phi Alpha Theta History Honor Society 2006
Kappa Delta Pi International Honor Society in Education 2003
Rutgers University, History Honors Program, High Honors 2002
RELATED EXPERIENCE
Chairman and organizer of the UVA-Monticello Early American Seminar, 2012-2013
Referee, Essays in History, published by the UVA Department of History, 2010-present
Research Assistant, Virginia Center for Digital History, UVA, Summer 2010
Instructor, Saturday Enrichment Program, University of Virginia, January 2010
Graduate Assistant, Summer Transition Program, University of Virginia, Summer 2009
Interpreter, National Constitution Center, Philadelphia, PA, 2004-2007
Tour Guide, History Hunters, Germantown, Philadelphia, PA, 2007
PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS
American Historical Association
Organization of American Historians
Southern Historical Association
Society of Historians of the Early American Republic
Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture
