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David Gellman

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David Gellman

A. Lindsay O'Connor Chair of American Institutions in the Department of History

Department/Office Information

History
317 Alumni Hall

Contact

I am a historian of colonial North America and the early United States, with a particular focus on efforts to abolish slavery in the Revolutionary Era and in the Nineteenth Century. I am embarking on a new book project entitled “Lincoln in the 21st Century” which explores how Abraham Lincoln interacts with cultural, political, economic, and moral imagination in our tempestuous times. My most recent book, Liberty’s Chain: Slavery, Abolition, and the Jay Family of New York (Three Hills/Cornell, 2022), is a multi-generational biography that tells the story of founding father John Jay, his descendants, and the enslaved and formerly enslaved members of their households. I trace personal, regional, and national arcs from the colonial period to the early 20th century. My work on the Jays builds upon my prior work on the abolition of slavery in New York State and the struggle for African American citizenship there. I also have written about novelist James Fenimore Cooper and rock legend Bruce Springsteen and am a co-host for the "Revolutionary America" channel of the New Books Network. I present widely to scholarly and general audiences.

Education
  • BA, Amherst College
  • PhD, Northwestern University
Publications

Books

  • Liberty’s Chain: Slavery, Abolition, and the Jay Family of New York (Three Hills, an imprint of Cornell University Press, 2022).
  • American Odysseys: A History of Colonial North America, co-author, Timothy J. Shannon (Oxford University Press, 2014).
  • Emancipating New York: The Politics of Slavery and Freedom, 1777-1827 (Louisiana State University Press, 2006).
  • Jim Crow New York: A Documentary History of Race and Citizenship, 1777-1877, co-editor, David Quigley (New York University Press, 2003).

Book Chapters

  • “Sharing the Founders’ Flame: John Jay, Missouri, and Memory,” in A Fire Bell in the Past: The Missouri Crisis at 200, Volume 1: Western Slavery, National Impasse, ed. Jeffrey L. Pasley and John Craig Hammond (University of Missouri Press, 2021).
  • “Abbe’s Ghost: Negotiating Slavery in Paris, 1783-4,” in Experiencing Empire: Power, People, and Revolution in Early America, ed. Patrick Griffin (University of Virginia Press, 2017).
  • “Darkness on the Edge of Town: Springsteen, Richard Ford, and the American Dream,” in Kenneth Womack, Jerry Zolten, and ¬Mark Bernhard eds., Bruce Springsteen, Cultural Studies, and the Runaway American Dream (Ashgate, 2012).
  • “Going Nowhere: Bruce, The Beatles, Neil Young, Talking Heads and Others,” in David Izzo, ed., Bruce Springsteen and the American Soul: Essays on the Songs and Influence of a Cultural Icon (McFarland, 2011).

Articles

  • “No Shelter from the Storm: Slavery and Freedom in Early New York City,” in forum “Decentering Early New York City’s History,” New York History 103, no. 1 (Summer 2022), 23-35.
  • “”The master and the man must change places for a season’: Untangling Historical Narratives of Race and Loyalty in The Spy,” The James Fenimore Cooper Society Journal 32, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 2021), 5-27.
  • “Pirates, Sugar, Debtors, and Slaves: Political Economy and the Case for Gradual Abolition in New York,” Slavery and Abolition, Vol. 22, No. 2 (August 2001), 51-68.
  • “Race, the Public Sphere, and Abolition in Late Eighteenth- Century New York,” Journal of the Early Republic, Vol. 20, No. 4 (Winter 2000), 607-636.
Distinctions
  • Herbert H. Lehman Prize for History—Distinguished Scholarship (2024).
  • Andrew Wallace Crandall Professor of History, DePauw University (2016-2021).
  • Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellow, Huntington Library, (March 2015).
  • John J. & Elizabeth Bowden Baughman Faculty Fellowship, DePauw University (2009-2010, 2011-2013).
  • Choice Outstanding Academic Titles, 2007, 2004.
  • Kate B. and Hall J. Peterson Fellowship Associate Fellowship, American Antiquarian Society, (March 2005).
  • The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition, Yale Center for International and Area Studies, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut (Jan./Feb. 2005).
  • The Ralph D. Gray Article Prize, Journal of the Early Republic (2001).
Courses
  • History 203: Age of the American Revolution
  • History 320: New York City History
Commentary and Media
  • , New Books Network, August 2026.
  • Albany Times Union, April 19, 2026.
  • : The Panorama: Expansive Views from the Journal of the Early Republic, June 2025.
  • : Indianapolis Star, April 29, 2025.
  • , November 2023.
  • , C-SPAN 3, C-SPAN Radio, cspan.org, January 2023.
  • : Albany Times Union, February 6, 2022.
  • : Historians Against Slavery, reposted to Prindle Post, September 2014.