Education:

University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, Ph.D. History, 2005.
Dissertation: “Enslaved Watermen in the Atlantic World, 1444-1888.”

California State University, Fullerton, Fullerton, CA, M.A., History, 2000.
Thesis: “The Confederate Slave: A Forgotten Southern Asset.”

California State University, Fullerton, Fullerton, CA, B.A., History, 1997.

Academic Awards, Grants, and Fellowships:

Two-Month John Haskell Kemble Fellowship—Huntington Library (2008).
College of Liberal Arts Summer Stipend, 2008—University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Faculty Summer Research Stipend—Fairfield University (2006).
Organization of American Historians 2005 Louis Pelzer Memorial Award for “Enslaved Swimmers and Divers in the Atlantic World,” in The Journal of American History (March 2006), pp. 1327-1355.

Ford Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship for Minorities (2004-2005).
Paul Cuffe Memorial Fellowship—Frank C. Munson Institute of American Maritime Studies at Mystic Seaport: Museum of America and the Sea (2004).
One-Month Fletcher Jones Foundation Fellow—Huntington Library (2004).
Third Place Graduate Student Day Award—University of South Carolina (2004).

Presentation titled “A Culture of Cleanliness: Slaves’ Impact on Western Hygienic Practices.”

Fellowship in Southern Studies—Institute for Southern Studies, University of South Carolina (2003).
Four-Year Graduate School Fellow Appointment—University of South Carolina (2001).
Four-Year Department of History Fellowship—University of South Carolina (2001).

Publications:

“Slave Culture,” Robert Paquette and Mark M. Smith, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Slavery in the Americas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
“Sport and Slavery,” in Edward E. Baptist, ed., Encyclopedia of Slavery in the Americas (New York: Facts on File, forthcoming).
Book Review: Claudio Saunt, Black, White, and Indian: Race and the Unmaking of an American Family (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), in The North Carolina Historical Review, Vol. LXXXIII, No. 4 (Oct, 2006), pp. 481-482.
“Enslaved Swimmers and Divers in the Atlantic World,” in The Journal of American History, Vol. 92, No. 4 (March, 2006), pp. 1327-1355.

Received the 2005 Louis Pelzer Memorial Award from the Organization of American Historians.

Book Review: Judith A. Carney, Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), in The Journal of African American History, Vol. 90, No. 4 (Fall 2005), pp. 422-424.
“Primus Slave Conspiracy,” in South Carolina Encyclopedia (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2006).

Publications in Progress:

Enslaved Watermen in the Atlantic World, 1444-1880 (manuscript)—Offered a contract by several university presses.
“A Culture of Cleanliness: Hygiene in the African Diaspora and Concepts of Race and Civilization.”
“The Confederate Slave: A Forgotten Southern Asset,” M.A. thesis (2000), California State University, Fullerton—University of South Carolina Press is interested in published manuscript.
“Surfing in Africa During the Slave-Trading Period: Slaves’ Failure to Transmit a Surfing Culture.”

Academic Appointments:

University of Nevada, Las Vegas (August 2007-Present).
Assistant Prof: HI 498/698: West Africa & the Making of the Atlantic World, 1444-1880 (Fall 2007).
Assistant Prof: HI 498/698: Comparative Slavery (Fall 2007).
Assistant Prof: HI 730: Cultural History of the African Diaspora (Spring 2008).
Assistant Prof: HI 110: Slavery and Freedom in American History (Spring 2008).

Fairfield University, Fairfield, CT (August 2005-August 2007)
Assistant Professor: West Africa and the Making of the Atlantic World, 1444-1880 (Spring 2007).
Assistant Professor: Social and Cultural History of the African Diaspora, 1444-1888 (Spring 2007).
Assistant Professor: African American History, 1619-1877 (Fall 2006).
Assistant Professor: Africans in the Americas, 1444-1888 (Fall 2006).
Assistant Professor: West Africa and the Making of the Atlantic World, 1444-1880 (Spring 2006).
Assistant Professor: Social History of the American Civil War and Reconstruction (Spring 2006). Assistant Professor: African American History, 1619-1877 (Fall 2005).

Assistant Professor: Africans in the Americas, 1444-1888 (Fall 2005).

University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC
      Teaching Assistant: U.S. History through 1877 (Spring 2004).
      Teaching Assistant: U.S. History through 1877 (Fall 2003).
      Research Assistant: U.S. History (Fall 2000-Spring 2003).
      Research Appointment: Ronald E. McNair Program (Summer 2002).

Presentations:

“A Culture of Cleanliness: The Hygienic Traditions of Early Modern People of African and European Descent and Concepts of Race and Civilization.” University of Nevada, Las Vegas, History Graduate Student Association Faculty Lecture Series. Las Vegas, NV. (April 2, 2008)
“A Culture of Cleanliness: The Hygienic Traditions of Early Modern People of African and European Descent and Concepts of Race and Civilization.” University of South Carolina Department of History Visiting Lecture Series. Columbia, SC. (March 18, 2008).
“A Culture of Cleanliness: Hygiene in the African Diaspora and Sensory Perceptions of Westerners,” 2007 Southern Historical Association Meeting. Richmond, VA (Oct. 31-Nov. 3, 2007).
“African Fusion: Slaves’ Impact on Western Foodways Beyond the Boundaries of Slavery,” Culinary Historians of Boston, Schlesinger Library. Cambridge, MA (Dec. 12, 2006).
“Enslaved Swimmers and Divers in the Atlantic World,” Gender, Race, Ethnicity and Power in Maritime America Conference, Mystic Seaport: Museum of America and the Sea. Mystic, CT (Oct. 26-29, 2006).
“Enslaved Swimmers and Divers in the Atlantic World,” AMISTAD America, Inc. Black History Month Sunday Lecture Series. Mystic, CT (Feb. 26, 2006).
“Enslaved Swimmers and Divers in the Atlantic World,” Fairfield University Faculty Research Symposium. Fairfield, CT (March 20, 2006).
“West African Maritime Traditions in America” Black Hands, Blue Seas: The Maritime Heritage of African Americans Exhibit Educators Day, Mystic Seaport: The Museum of America and the Sea. Mystic, CT (Nov. 5, 2005).
“A Culture of Cleanliness: West African Slaves’ Hygiene and their Impact on Western Cleanliness,” 2005 Organization of American Historians Annual Meeting. San Jose, CA (Mar. 31-Apr. 3, 2005).
“Enslaved Swimmers and Divers in the Atlantic World,” Guest Speaker Series, State University of New York at Stony Brook. Stony Brook, NY (Feb. 2, 2005).
“Enslaved Swimmers and Divers in the Atlantic World,” 2004 Southern Historical Association Conference. Memphis, TN (Nov. 3-6, 2004).
“A Culture of Cleanliness: Slaves’ Impact on Western Hygienic Practices,” University of North Carolina, Greensburg Atlantic World Conference. Greensburg, NC (Sep. 17-18, 2004).
“A Culture of Cleanliness: Slaves’ Impact on Western Hygienic Practices,” Graduate Student Day, University of South Carolina. Columbia, SC (Apr. 7, 2004).

Received “Third Place Graduate Student Day Award.”

“Surfing in West Africa During the Slave-Trading Period: The Failure to Establish and Diffuse a Surf Culture,” January 8-11, 2004, Hawaii International Conference on Arts & Humanities. Honolulu, HI.
“Enslaved Swimmers in the Atlantic World,” Fifteenth Annual Graduate History Forum. University of North Carolina at Charlotte (Mar. 29, 2003).
“Enslaved Swimmers in the Atlantic World,” 2003 Annual Meeting of the South Carolina Historical Association. Columbia, South Carolina (Mar. 1, 2003).
“The Impact of Slavery on the Confederate War Effort,” Southwestern Social Science Association Meeting. New Orleans, Louisiana (Mar. 29, 1997).

Educator Workshops:

Resident Scholar for the Black Hands, Blue Seas: The Maritime Heritage of African Americans, Educator Institute, July 9-13, 2007. Developed a one-week workshop to instruct secondary teachers on how to incorporate African Americans’ social, cultural, and economic contributions to the United States into their curriculums. Themes included:

Comparison of early modern African and Western living conditions.
The Atlantic Slave Trade and broader consequences on Africa and Americas.
Slaves’ ability to transmit African knowledge and belief systems, which they used to provide their lives with structure, meaning, and purpose, while enhancing slavery’s economic success.
Slaves’ African-influenced saltwater foodways. Explain how bondwomen shaped slaveholders’ diets and used nineteenth-century cookbooks to consider influences on Northern middle class diet.
The African American maritime experiences.

Resident Scholar, Black Hands, Blue Seas: The Maritime Heritage of African Americans, Educator Institute, July 10-14, 2006. Developed a one-week workshop to instruct secondary teachers on how to incorporate African Americans’ social, cultural, and economic contributions to the United States into their curriculums. Themes included:

Slaves’ ability to transmit African knowledge and belief systems, which they used to provide their lives with structure, meaning, and purpose, while enhancing slavery’s economic success.
Slaves’ African-influenced saltwater foodways. Explain how bondwomen shaped slaveholders’ diets and used nineteenth-century cookbook recipes for gumbo, jambalaya, and pepper pot to consider how slaves influenced the Northern middle class diet.
African Americans’ wartime experiences.
African Americans’ maritime experiences.
African Americans’ seamen in the struggle for equality and civil rights.

Black Hands, Blue Seas: The Maritime Heritage of African Americans Exhibit Educators Day, November 5, 2005, Mystic Seaport: The Museum of America and the Sea.

Provided secondary teachers with a historical overview of Black Hands, Blue Seas exhibit.
Discussed the inclusion of African transmissions and retentions in secondary curriculum.

Museum Exhibit Consultation:

Historical Consultant for Black Hands, Blue Seas: The Maritime Heritage of African Americans exhibit, Mystic Seaport: The Museum of America and the Sea. Mystic, CT (July 2005-March 2007).

Determined themes that should be included in the exhibit and how it should be organized.
Determined how artifacts should be interpreted and presented to the public.
Wrote historical narratives for panels describing how African Americans’ maritime heritage shaped their work, culture, and struggle for freedom and civil rights.
Wrote labels providing a historical overview of artifacts.
Loaned two 160s prints of African fishermen and a seventeenth-century map of West Africa to the Black Hands, Blue Seas: The Maritime Heritage of African Americans exhibit, Mystic Seaport. Mystic, CT. (July 2005-March 2007).

Historical Consultant for Black Hands, Blue Seas: The Maritime Heritage of African Americans exhibit, Independence Seaport Museum. Philadelphia, PA (June 6, 2008- Apr. 12, 2009).
- Loaned two 160s prints of African fishermen and a seventeenth-century map of West Africa to the Black Hands, Blue Seas: The Maritime Heritage of African Americans exhibit, Independence Seaport Museum. Philadelphia, PA (June 6, 2008- Apr. 12, 2009).