W. Caleb McDaniel

Assistant Professor, Department of History
Rice University, Humanities Building 330
713-348-2556, caleb.mcdaniel [at] rice.edu

Online @

• Twitter: @wcaleb
• My blog: Offprints
• My Clippings
• My bookmarks

Courses Taught

• HIST 118: The United States, 1848 to the Present (syllabus)
• HIST 159: Legendary Americans (cross-listed as FSEM 159) - (Fall 2009 | Fall 2011)
• HIST 246: The American Civil War Era, 1848-1876 (Spring 2011 | Fall 2011)
• HIST 396: The Rise of Transnational Activism (Fall 2008)
• HIST 423: American Radicals and Reformers (Fall 2008 | Spring 2010 | Spring 2012)
• HIST 587: Methods in U.S. Cultural History (Fall 2009 | Spring 2012)
• HIST 588: Graduate Readings in Nineteenth-Century U.S. History (Spring 2009 | Spring 2011)

Curriculum Vitae [pdf]

Education

• Ph.D. in History, Johns Hopkins University, 2006
  Dissertation: "Our Country is the World: Radical American Abolitionists Abroad" (download)
• M. A. in Philosophy, Texas A&M University, 2001
• B. A. in History, Texas A&M University, 2000

Works in Progress

• Book Manuscript: "The Ever-Restless Ocean: Garrisonian Abolitionists, Transatlantic Reform, and the Problem of Democracy, 1820-1870"
• Research for a book project on the transatlantic history of the "water cure," also known as "hydropathy"

Publications

Articles and Chapters:
• "Saltwater Antislavery: American Abolitionists on the Atlantic Ocean in the Age of Steam," Atlantic Studies 8, no. 2 (June 2011), 141-163 (online or email me for copy)
• "His Brothers' Keeper: John Brown, Moral Stewardship, and Interracial Abolitionism," Slavery and Abolition 32, no. 1 (March 2011), 27-52 (online or email me for copy)
• "Philadelphia Abolitionists and Antislavery Cosmopolitanism, 1760-1840," in Antislavery and Abolition in Philadelphia: Emancipation and the Long Struggle for Racial Justice in the City of Brotherly Love, ed. Richard Newman and James Mueller (LSU Press, 2011), 149-173 (order)
• "John Brown, Quietist," Common Knowledge 16, no. 1 (Winter 2010), 31-47. Commissioned for Part 4 of a multi-issue, multidisciplinary symposium on the theme of "quietism" (online at Project Muse)
• "Repealing Unions: American Abolitionists, Irish Repeal, and the Origins of Garrisonian Disunionism," Journal of the Early Republic 28, no. 2 (2008), 243-269 (download)
• "The Fourth and the First: Abolitionist Holidays, Respectability, and Radical Interracial Reform," American Quarterly 57, no. 1 (2005), 129-151 (download)

Shorter Works:
• "Abolitionism" (1500 words), in The Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History, ed. Akira Iriye and Pierre-Yves Saunier (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)
• Essay on American Exceptionalism and Transnational History at the Palgrave Macmillan online discussion forum
• Entries on "Leonard Grimes" and "Jehiel Beman" in The African American National Biography, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham (Oxford University Press, 2009)
• Entries on "West Indian emancipation celebrations," "World's Antislavery Convention, 1840," "George Thompson, "Daniel O'Connell," and "Louis Kossuth," in Encyclopedia of Antislavery and Abolition, ed. Peter Hinks and John McKivigan (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2006).
• "Blogging in the Early Republic: Why Bloggers Belong in the History of Reading," Common-Place 5, no. 4 (July 2005). Noticed in the Chronicle of Higher Education and Utne Reader.

Book Reviews:
• Review of Making Slavery History: Abolitionism and the Politics of Memory in Massachusetts, by Margot Minardi, in Civil War Book Review (Summer 2011) (link)
• Review of John Brown's War Against Slavery, by Robert E. McGlone, in Journal of Southern History 77, no. 2 (May 2011), 436-437
• Review of John Brown's Trial, by Brian McGinty, in Journal of American History 97 (September 2010), 512-513 (online at History Cooperative)
• Review essay on Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, by John Stauffer, in Reviews in American History 38, no. 1 (March 2010), 169-176 (online at Project Muse)
• Review of Big Enough to Be Inconsistent: Abraham Lincoln Confronts Slavery and Race, by George M. Fredrickson, Journal of Southern History 75, no. 4 (November 2009), 1062-1063
• Review of Reading the Old Man: John Brown in American Culture, by Bruce A. Ronda, in Journal of Southern History 76, no. 1 (February 2010), 169-170
• Review of Seeking the One Great Remedy: Francis George Shaw and Nineteenth-Century Reform, by Lorien Foote, in Civil War History 52, no. 2 (June 2006), 178-180 (online at Project Muse)
• Review of The Rise of Aggressive Abolitionism: Addresses to the Slaves, by Stanley Harrold, in H-SHEAR, September, 2004 (online at H-Net Reviews)

Academic Honors

• Ralph D. Gray Article Prize from the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, for "Repealing Unions" (2009)
• Scholarly Fellowship from Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History (2004)
• Teaching Fellowship from Center for Africana Studies, Johns Hopkins University (2004)
• Honorable Mention, La Pietra Dissertation Travel Fellowship in Transnational History, Organization of American Historians (2004)
• Dean's Teaching Fellowship, Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, Johns Hopkins University (2003)
• Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in Humanistic Studies (2001-2002)
• Alexander Butler Prize, for the best first-year paper written by a history doctoral student at JHU (2002)

Selected Presentations

• "The Ever-Restless Ocean: Wendell Phillips and the Problem of Democracy," at the Wendell Phillips Bicentennial Commemmoration, Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice, Harvard Law School, June 2-4, 2011 (read paper)
• "The Case of John L. Brown: Slavery, Sex, South Carolina, and the Whispering Gallery of Transatlantic Abolitionism," at "Civil War--Global Conflict," the 2011 international conference of the Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World program at the College of Charleston, SC, March 3-5, 2011 (read abstract | download paper)
• "'All Hail, Public Opinion!': American Abolitionists on British Liberalism and the Repeal of the Corn Laws," Organization of American Historians, Houston, TX, March 17-20, 2011 (watch video on C-SPAN)
• "Saltwater Antislavery: Abolitionist Journeys on the Atlantic Ocean in the Age of Steam," keynote talk for Encounters along the Journey, the Spring 2010 Interdisciplinary Symposium of the Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research at Texas A&M University, April 23, 2010
• "William Lloyd Garrison, Nonviolent Abolitionists, and John Brown," John Brown, Slavery, and the Legacies of Revolutionary Violence in Our Own Time: A Conference Commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the Harpers Ferry Raid, Gilder Lehrman Center's 11th Annual International Conference, Oct 29-31, 2009, Yale University (abstract | video)
• "What Counts as Radical Abolitionism? A Reconsideration of Recent Scholarship," OAH Annual Meeting, Seattle, March 26-28, 2009 (download)
• "Ghosts of Distinction: Reconsidering John Brown's Interracial Relationships," invited presentation to Houston Area Southern Historians (HASH) Symposium, Rice University, September 9, 2009
• Commentator for Panel, "American Civic Identity and Practice in Comparative Perspective," SHEAR Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, July 19, 2008
• "Beyond Anti-Exceptionalism: Using Transnational History to Write the History of Nationalism," invited talk at the Universite de Montreal, October 29, 2007
• "Are They a Nation? Civic Nationalism in Transnational Perspective," Symposium in Honor of Dorothy Ross, Johns Hopkins University, April 27-28, 2007
• "Repealing Unions: American Abolitionists, Irish Repealers, and the Coming of the Civil War, 1842-1847," AHA Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, January 5-8, 2006 (download)
• "Our Country is the World: American Abolitionists, Louis Kossuth and Philanthropic Revolutions," OAH Annual Meeting, Boston, March 25-28, 2004 (download)
• "Haiti's Usable Past: Violence, Anglophilia, and Antebellum American Abolitionists," OIEAHC Ninth Annual Conference, New Orleans, June 6-8, 2003 (download)
• "The Abolitionist Fourth of July," Sixth Annual Conference on Holiday, Ritual, Festival, Celebration, and Public Display, Bowling Green State University, May 30-June 1, 2002
• "Over-Eager Interpreters: Clifford Geertz and Romantic Hermeneutics," Fourth Annual Graduate Student Conference in Philosophy, University of Kentucky, March 10, 2001

Miscellany

• Co-Editor for H-SHEAR Book Reviews
• How to Read for History
• Mode for Caleb, my now defunct grad school blog
• My configuration files for Mutt (?) and Vim (?)
• The LaTeX file I use to generate my pdf CV

Last updated 18 January 2012