Faculty

Profile

Amanda Bellows is historian of the United States. She received her Ph.D. in History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  

Her forthcoming book, The Explorers: A New History of the United States in Ten Expeditions, will be published by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins, in May 2024. Dr. Bellows is the author of American Slavery and Russian Serfdom in the Post-Emancipation Imagination (University of North Carolina Press, 2020). She has conducted archival fieldwork in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Russia. Her writing has appeared in academic journals as well as 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. She has shared her research with public audiences via C-Span, Gilder Lehrman's Book Breaks, and other programs.

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

Co-edited Books

South Writ Large: Stories, Arts, and Ideas from the Global South. Co-edited by Amanda Bellows, Katherine Doss, Robin Miura, and Samia Serageldin. Center for the Study of the American South, University of North Carolina Press, 2022.

Book Contributions

 “African American Military Service and Citizenship in the Late Nineteenth Century,” in Race and Gender at War: Writing American Military History. Edited by Lesley Gordon and Andrew Huebner. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press (Forthcoming)

“‘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, 2021.

“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, 2016, 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/.

"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/.                                   

Performances and Appearances

C-SPAN, “Buying and Selling the Civil War” Panel, Gettysburg College Civil War Institute, June 11, 2022. https://www.c-span.org/video/?520969-2/buying-selling-civil-war

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 19^th 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/.

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.