Dr Thomas Buchanan

Biography/ Background

Scotch-Irish by lineage, Pennsylvanian from childhood, and American expat since "Ws" re-election, Tom Buchanan's academic training began at Oberlin College in Ohio where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts and an honours degree in history. Later he received his Masters and Ph.D. in history from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. After doing postdoctoral work at the University of Memphis, he taught as an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. He has been teaching at the University of Adelaide since 2005.

Teaching Interests

Tom's teaching interests are broad as he is interested in understanding the effects of large scale historical change, represented in the growth of capitalism, imperialism, and de-colonial movements. His interests are in considering how ordinary people have negotiated systems of power that have historically reified race, class, gender, and nation as key components of personal identity.

He coordinates and lecturers in the first year course "Europe, Empire and the World" and second and third year courses titled "The Origins of Modern America", "Modern America: From the Civlil War to Iraq", and "Slavery and Emancipation in the Atlantic World". At the honours level he will be teaching a new course on the history of capitalism in semester 1, 2012.

He is available to supervise honours and Ph.D theses in social and cultural history in a variety of historical settings.

Research Interests

Tom is a scholar of nineteenth-century America with a focus on the history of enslaved people. He is interested in labour, race, and popular protest in the era of the Civil War. Currently he is researching enslaved people in the context of State Supreme Court cases, the role of emotions in constructing African-American communities and traditions of resistance, and extending his research on antebellum river communities.

These interests have spawned a number of professional commitments. Tom is on the executive committee of the Australia and New Zealand American Studies Association and brougth their bi-annual conference to the University of Adelaide in July, 2010. He is on the editorial board and is a contributor to an Adam Mathews digital database project titled "Slavery, Abolition, and Social Justice" (currently available at the Barr Smith library). He also consults on a National Endowment of Humanities project titled "Rivers to the Sea: The Mississippi and Its Impact on America."

Ph.D. Supervisions

Kelly Birch, "Slavery and Louisiana's Prisons"

Paula DeAngles, "Tom Barker and the International History of the I.W.W."

Viorela Papuc, "CIA Perspectives on Romania"

Amy Walker, "United States Military Desegregation in the Cold War"

 

 

Publications

Books

1. Black Life on the Mississippi: Slaves, Free Blacks, and the Western Steamboat World, University of North Carolina Press (2004, pb 2007)

Journal Articles

    1. "The Penalty of a Tyrant's Law: Landscapes of Incarceration During the Second Slavery" (with Kelly Birch), Slavery and Abolition, Forthcoming.

    2. "Omen of Evil": Steamboats and the Colonizaton of the Ohio River Valley", in Rita Kohn Ed., in Full Steam Ahead: Reflections of the Impact of the First Steamboat on the Ohio River, 1811-2011 (Indiana Historical Society Press, 2011), 89-120.

    3. "Teaching the American History Survey in Omaha: From Activist History to Foreign Curiosity”, Australiasian Journal of American Studies, Vol. 28, No. 1, (July, 2009), pp. 111-123.

   4. Editor of "The Journals of the Davy Crockett, Commencing December 20, 1834," Indiana Magazine of History, July 2006.

   5. ""Black Life on the Mississippi": African-American Work and Culture on Antebellum Steamboats" in Joe W. Trotter, Tera Hunter and Earl Lewis, eds., African American Urban History: Perspectives from the Colonial Period to the Present, (Palgrave, 2004).

  6. "Levees of Hope: African American Steamboat Workers, Cities, and Slave Escapes on the Antebellum Mississippi," Journal of Urban History, March, 2004

  7. "Rascals on the Antebellum Mississippi: African American Steamboat Workers and the St. Louis Hangings of 1841" Journal of Social History, June, 2001

Recent Book Reviews

    1. Civil War Book review (Winter, 2012), Robert Gudmestad, Steamboats and the Rise of the Cotton Kingdom (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2011).

    2. Australasian Journal of American Studies (July 2011), Ian Tyrell, Reforming the World: The Creation of America's Moral Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010).

    3. American Historical Review  (April 2009), Paul F. Paskoff’s Troubled Waters: Steamboat Disasters, River Improvements, and American Public Policy, 1821-1860 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007)

    4. Civil War History (March, 2009), Anthony E. Kaye, Joining Places: Slave Neighborhoods in the Old South (UNC, 2007).

    5. Journal of Social History (December, 2007)  Walter C. Rucker, The River Flows on: Black Resistance, Culture, and Identity Formation in Early America, (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2005. xii plus 288 pp. $49.95 cloth). (1000 words)

     6. Civil War History (March 2007), The Pearl: A Failed Slave Escape on the Potomac, By Josephine F. Pacheco. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. Pp. 320. $29.95 cloth.) ((1000 words)

     7. American Historical Review, Carl A. Brasseaux, Steamboats on Louisiana's Bayous: A History and Directory, 2006

     8. Journal of Social History, Michael J. Bennett, Union Jacks: Yankee Sailors in the Civil War, (University of North Carolina Press, 2004).

     9. H-Civil War, Spring 2005, Keith P. Griffler, Front Line of Freedom: African Americans and the Forging of the Underground Railroad in the Ohio Valley, (University of Kentucky Press, 2004)

    10. Journal of Social History, Fall 2004, Paul A. Gilje, Liberty on the Waterfront: American Maritime Culture in the Age of Revolution, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004

    11. Journal of Third World Studies, Fall 2004, of Selwyn H. H. Carrington, The Sugar Industry and the Abolition of the Slave Trade, 1775-1810, Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2002

   12. Journal of Social History, Spring 2003, of David S. Cecelski, The Waterman's Song: Slavery and Freedom in Maritime North Carolina (North Carolina: North Carolina Press, 2001).

Entry last updated: Saturday, 15 Sep 2012