Samantha Payne
Assistant Professor
Samantha Payne is a historian of the nineteenth-century United States in a global perspective, with a special focus on Latin America. She received her Ph.D. in History from Harvard University in 2022. She is currently working on her first book, Atlantic Reconstruction (under contract with University of North Carolina Press), which explores the transnational struggle over the boundaries of Black political citizenship in Cuba, Brazil, and the United States, the last societies to abolish slavery in the Americas.
The dissertation upon which the book is based was awarded the 2023 for the best dissertation in American history from the Society of American Historians. It also won the Betty Unterberger Dissertation Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) and an honorable mention for the Harold K. Gross Prize for best dissertation from the Harvard History Department.
A has been published in Past & Present, winning the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians’ Prize for best article in any field of history, and an honorable mention for the Stuart L. Bernath Scholarly Article Prize from SHAFR. Her research on “” also appeared recently in the Journal of the Civil War Era. Her scholarship has been supported by the Agrarian Studies Program at Yale University, the Gilder Lehrman Institute, the Virginia Museum of History and Culture, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Southern Historical Collection, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and the University of São Paulo, among others.
At the ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø, Professor Payne teaches courses on slavery, race, capitalism, and the Civil War and Reconstruction. She also serves on the advisory board of the Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World Program (CLAW) and on the Academic Research Committee for the Center for the Study of Slavery in ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø (CSSC).
Education
Ph.D. in History, Harvard University, 2022
M.A. in History, Harvard University, 2017
B.A. in History and English, College of William and Mary, 2014
Courses Taught
The History of Global Capitalism (HIST 116)
The History of American Racism (HIST 220/AAS 300)
The Civil War and Reconstruction in the Atlantic World (HIST 223)
Abolition in the Americas (HIST 590)
Unlearning American History (FYSU 121)