Eric Herschthal | Assistant Professor
Eric Herschthal
Assistant Professor of History
801/585-1196
CTIHB 315
About
Eric Herschthal is a historian of eighteenth and nineteenth century America, with a particular focus on slavery and abolition. He is currently working on a book about slavery’s role in the origins of climate change and has previously published a book on the role of science and technology in the transatlantic antislavery movement titled The Science of Abolition: How Slaveholders Become the Enemies of Progress (Yale, 2021). He teaches courses on early American history, slavery, the Civil War, and climate history. He received a Ph.D. in history from Columbia University, an undergraduate degree in history from Princeton University, and has written for media outlets including The New York Times, The New Republic, The Washington Post, and The New York Review of Books.
- Ph.D., Columbia University
- M.S. Journalism, Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism
- B.A., Princeton University
My research focuses on the links between slavery in the Anglo-American Atlantic World and its ties to science, technology, capitalism, and climate change. My first book, The Science of Abolition: How Slaveholders Became the Enemies of Progress (Yale, 2021), explored how Black and white abolitionists and scientists in the early United States, Britain, and Sierra Leone used scientific ideas to challenge slavery. My current book project, tentatively titled Carbon Conscripts: Slavery and the Origins of Climate Change (in progress), deploys a carbon accounting method to determine whether slave-based plantation labor in early America and the British Atlantic World meaningful increased carbon emissions of early modern empires. My research has been published The William & Mary Quarterly, Slavery & Abolition, and The Journal of the Early Republic, among other journals, and has been supported by Harvard University’s Warren Center for American History, Yale University’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the National Humanities Center, as well as other institutions.
Books:
The Science of Abolition: How Slaveholders Became the Enemies of Progress (Yale University Press, 2021)
Carbon Conscripts: Slavery and the Origins of Climate Change (in progress)
Articles:
The William and Mary Quarterly “The Plantation Carbon Complex: Slavery and the Origins of Climate Change in the Early Modern British Atlantic,” William & Mary Quarterly, 3rd series, 81, no. 2 (April 2024): 255-306, co-authored with John L. Brooke.
Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences “Slavery, Health, and Healing Now: The State of the Field,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 77, no. 1 (Jan. 2022): 1-23.
Slavery & Abolition “What Kind of Abolitionist Was Benjamin Banneker? Reluctant Activism and the Intellectual Lives of Early Black Americans,” Slavery & Abolition 42, no. 4 (Oct. 2021): 669-90.
Journal of National Medical Association “Discovering a Hidden Figure of Service and Leadership: The Reverend Charles Edgar Newsome, MD,” Journal of National Medical Association 112, no. 1 (Feb. 2020): 24-27, co-authored with Leon McDougle, Leta Hendricks, Quinn Capers IV, & Simone C. Drake.
Early American Studies “The Science of Antislavery in the Early Republic: The Case of Dr. Benjamin Rush,” Early American Studies, Vol. 15, No. 2 (Spring 2017): 274-307.
The Journal of the Early Republic “Slaves, Spaniards and Subversion in Early Louisiana: The Persistent Fears of Black Revolt and Spanish Collusion in Territorial Louisiana, 1803-1812,” The Journal of the Early Republic Vol. 36, No. 2 (Summer 2016): 283-311.
Book Chapters:
“Climate Change and Global Commodities,” co-authored with John L. Brooke and Jed O. Kaplan, in Oxford Handbook of Global Commodities History, eds. Jonathan Curry-Machado, Jean Stubbs, William Clarence-Smith, and Jelmer Vos (Oxford University Press, 2023)
“Frederick Douglass: Science and Technology,” in Frederick Douglass in Context, ed. Michael Roy (Cambridge University Press, 2021): 255-66.
“Slavery, Science, and Empire at Yale: Silliman’s Scientific Instruments,” in Scientific Instruments as Cultural Artifacts, ed. Paola Bertucci (Yale University Press, under contract)
HIST 1700: American Civilization
HIST 2700: United States History to 1877
HIST 3730: The Civil War Era
HIST 4860/ETHNC 4860: American Slavery
HIST 7610: Nineteenth Century United States
HIST 7650: Slavery in the Atlantic World
HIST 7670: Climate History
2024-2025 Harvard University, Warren Center for American History
Visiting Faculty Fellowship, academic year. Book Project:
“Carbon Conscripts”
Harvard University, Hutchins Center for African & African American Research (declined)
Visiting Faculty Fellowship, academic year. Book Project: “Carbon Conscripts”
2023-24 Yale University, Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition
Faculty Fellowship
Faculty Research Fellowship, one-month. Book Project: “Carbon Conscripts”
The Huntington Library: Faculty Fellowship
Faculty Research Fellowship, one-month. Book Project: “Carbon Conscripts
Library Company of Philadelphia: Faculty Fellowship
Faculty Research Fellowship, one-month. Book Project: “Carbon Conscripts”
National Center for the Humanities: Summer Residency Fellowship
Faculty Research Fellowship, one-month. Book Project: “Carbon Conscripts”
Tanner Humanities Center Faculty Fellow: University of Utah
One Semester Faculty Research Leave. Book Project: “Carbon Conscripts”
2018-20 Postdoctoral Fellowship in Race and Medical Humanities: Ohio State University, African American & African Studies (2 years)
2017-18 Postdoctoral Fellowship: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (NYPL) / Lapidus Center for the Study of Transatlantic Slavery (academic year)
2016-17 Dissertation Completion Fellowship: University of Pennsylvania, McNeil Center for Early American Studies (academic year)