W. Caleb McDaniel

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

Courses Taught

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

Curriculum Vitae

Education

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

Works in Progress

• Book Manuscript: "Our Country is the World: Transatlantic Abolitionism and Cosmopolitan Nationalism, 1830-1870"
• Research for a book project on the transatlantic history of the "water cure," also known as "hydropathy"

Publications

Articles:
• "His Brothers' Keeper: John Brown, Moral Stewardship, and Interracial Abolitionism," forthcoming in Slavery and Abolition
• "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 (online at Project Muse)
• "The Fourth and the First: Abolitionist Holidays, Respectability, and Radical Interracial Reform," American Quarterly 57, no. 1 (2005), 129-151 (online at Project Muse)

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 essay (3600 words) on Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, by John Stauffer, forthcoming in Reviews in American History
• 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, forthcoming in Journal of Southern History
• 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

• 2008 Ralph D. Gray Article Prize from the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, for "Repealing Unions"
• 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)

Presentations

• "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 (pdf)
• "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 (pdf)
• "Our Country is the World: American Abolitionists, Louis Kossuth and Philanthropic Revolutions," OAH Annual Meeting, Boston, March 25-28, 2004 (pdf)
• "Haiti's Usable Past: Violence, Anglophilia, and Antebellum American Abolitionists," OIEAHC Ninth Annual Conference, New Orleans, June 6-8, 2003 (pdf)
• "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
• Offprints, my blog
• Clippings, my tumblelog
• Mode for Caleb, my now defunct grad school blog

Last updated 2 February 2010