Susan E O'Donovan
Biographic Data
| ID | 1128053 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Susan E O'Donovan |
| GIVEN NAMES | Susan E |
| FAMILY NAME | O'Donovan |
| SIGNATURE | DONOVAN S E O |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Memphis |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 5 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 11 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery
Seth Rockman, professor of history at Brown University, is the author or editor of three books, as well as numerous essays, almost all of which explore the intersections of slavery and capitalism and slavery and technology. These interests frame his most recent work. A finalist for the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in History and winner of the 2025 Philip Taft Labor History Book Award, Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery follows northe…
Working the Mississippi: Two Centuries of Life on the River by Bonnie Stepenoff
The Mississippi River has seen a good amount of scholarly traffic in the last decade. Thomas Buchanan, Robert Gudmested, and Walter Johnson have plied its fast-moving and murky waters, examining, respectively, the black women and men who labored the river’s vessels, the role of steamboats in the creation of the cotton kingdom, and the river as metaphor: the “dark dream” of expansionist planters’ imaginings. Others, notably Ari Kelman and Christop…
Slave against Slave: Plantation Violence in the Old South
Slaves beat, stabbed, hacked, and bludgeoned each other—sometimes to death. This is the central message of Jeff Forret's Slave against Slave. Intervening in what he sees as historians' tendency to emphasize community over conflict in antebellum slave society, Forret builds on the work of Brenda E. Stevenson, Dylan C. Penningroth, and others to argue that the creation of social order was difficult and occasionally bloody work. Slave life was “marr…
Slaves: America's Working Class
Research Article| December 01 2015 Slaves: America's Working Class Susan Eva O'Donovan Susan Eva O'Donovan Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Labor (2015) 12 (4): 17–21. https://doi.org/10.1215/15476715-3155116 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Susan Eva O'Donovan; Slaves: America's Working Class. Labor 1 December 2015; 12 (4): 17–21. doi: https://doi.org/10.1…
River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom
Book Review| December 01 2015 River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom. Johnson, Walter. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013viii + 526 pp., $35.00 (cloth) Susan Eva O'Donovan Susan Eva O'Donovan Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Labor (2015) 12 (4): 140–142. https://doi.org/10.1215/15476715-3155291 Views Icon Vi…
Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861–1867
This book examines the remaking of the South's labor system in the tumultuous aftermath of emancipation. Using documents selected from the National Archives, this volume depicts the struggle of unenfranchised and impoverished ex-slaves to control their own labor, establish their families as viable economic units, and secure independent possession of land. Among the topics addressed are the dispossession of settlers in the Sherman reserve, the reo…
Teaching Slavery in Today's Classroom
Twenty years ago, it would have been all but unthinkable to devote an entire issue of the OAH Magazine, of History to antebellum slavery (1). Outside the cloistered walls of the academy, few Americans were giving much thought to slavery as an institution, never mind to the myriad and formative roles enslaved women and men played in the making of the nation. With the exception of a cohort of African American and Marxist scholars who for a half-cen…
Swing the Sickle for the Harvest Is Ripe: Gender and Slavery in Antebellum Georgia
Becoming Free in the Cotton South
This book challenges our most basic ideas about slavery and freedom in America. Instead of seeing emancipation as the beginning or end of the story, O’Donovan explores the perilous transition between these two conditions, offering a unique vision of the enormous changes and the profound continuities in black life before and after the Civil War.
Twenty-Two Years a Slave and Forty Years a Freeman
Book Review| March 01 2006 Twenty-Two Years a Slave and Forty Years a Freeman Twenty-Two Years a Slave and Forty Years a Freeman Austin Steward, with an introduction by Graham Russell Hodges Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2002 xl + 182 pp., $19.95 (paper) Susan E. O'Donovan Susan E. O'Donovan Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Labor (2006) 3 (1): 172–175. https://doi.org/10.1215/15476715-3-1-172 Views Icon Views …
What Nature Suffers to Groe: Life, Labor, and Landscape on the Georgia Coast, 1680-1920
Journal Article “What Nature Suffers to Groef”: Life, Labor, and Landscape on the Georgia Coast, 1680–1920. By Mart A. Stewart. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996. xxii, 370 pp. $45.00, ISBN 0-8203-1808-6.) Get access Susan E. O'Donovan Susan E. O'Donovan University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 84, Issue 2, September 1997, P…
Swing the Sickle for the Harvest Is Ripe: Gender and Slavery in Antebellum Georgia
Teaching Slavery in Today's Classroom
Twenty years ago, it would have been all but unthinkable to devote an entire issue of the OAH Magazine, of History to antebellum slavery (1). Outside the cloistered walls of the academy, few Americans were giving much thought to slavery as an institution, never mind to the myriad and formative roles enslaved women and men played in the making of the nation. With the exception of a cohort of African American and Marxist scholars who for a half-cen…
Twenty-Two Years a Slave and Forty Years a Freeman
Book Review| March 01 2006 Twenty-Two Years a Slave and Forty Years a Freeman Twenty-Two Years a Slave and Forty Years a Freeman Austin Steward, with an introduction by Graham Russell Hodges Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2002 xl + 182 pp., $19.95 (paper) Susan E. O'Donovan Susan E. O'Donovan Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Labor (2006) 3 (1): 172–175. https://doi.org/10.1215/15476715-3-1-172 Views Icon Views …
What Nature Suffers to Groe: Life, Labor, and Landscape on the Georgia Coast, 1680-1920
Journal Article “What Nature Suffers to Groef”: Life, Labor, and Landscape on the Georgia Coast, 1680–1920. By Mart A. Stewart. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996. xxii, 370 pp. $45.00, ISBN 0-8203-1808-6.) Get access Susan E. O'Donovan Susan E. O'Donovan University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 84, Issue 2, September 1997, P…
Twenty-Two Years a Slave and Forty Years a Freeman
Book Review| March 01 2006 Twenty-Two Years a Slave and Forty Years a Freeman Twenty-Two Years a Slave and Forty Years a Freeman Austin Steward, with an introduction by Graham Russell Hodges Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2002 xl + 182 pp., $19.95 (paper) Susan E. O'Donovan Susan E. O'Donovan Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Labor (2006) 3 (1): 172–175. https://doi.org/10.1215/15476715-3-1-172 Views Icon Views …
Becoming Free in the Cotton South
This book challenges our most basic ideas about slavery and freedom in America. Instead of seeing emancipation as the beginning or end of the story, O’Donovan explores the perilous transition between these two conditions, offering a unique vision of the enormous changes and the profound continuities in black life before and after the Civil War.
Swing the Sickle for the Harvest Is Ripe: Gender and Slavery in Antebellum Georgia
Teaching Slavery in Today's Classroom
Twenty years ago, it would have been all but unthinkable to devote an entire issue of the OAH Magazine, of History to antebellum slavery (1). Outside the cloistered walls of the academy, few Americans were giving much thought to slavery as an institution, never mind to the myriad and formative roles enslaved women and men played in the making of the nation. With the exception of a cohort of African American and Marxist scholars who for a half-cen…
Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861–1867
This book examines the remaking of the South's labor system in the tumultuous aftermath of emancipation. Using documents selected from the National Archives, this volume depicts the struggle of unenfranchised and impoverished ex-slaves to control their own labor, establish their families as viable economic units, and secure independent possession of land. Among the topics addressed are the dispossession of settlers in the Sherman reserve, the reo…
Slaves: America's Working Class
Research Article| December 01 2015 Slaves: America's Working Class Susan Eva O'Donovan Susan Eva O'Donovan Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Labor (2015) 12 (4): 17–21. https://doi.org/10.1215/15476715-3155116 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Susan Eva O'Donovan; Slaves: America's Working Class. Labor 1 December 2015; 12 (4): 17–21. doi: https://doi.org/10.1…
River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom
Book Review| December 01 2015 River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom. Johnson, Walter. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013viii + 526 pp., $35.00 (cloth) Susan Eva O'Donovan Susan Eva O'Donovan Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Labor (2015) 12 (4): 140–142. https://doi.org/10.1215/15476715-3155291 Views Icon Vi…
Slave against Slave: Plantation Violence in the Old South
Slaves beat, stabbed, hacked, and bludgeoned each other—sometimes to death. This is the central message of Jeff Forret's Slave against Slave. Intervening in what he sees as historians' tendency to emphasize community over conflict in antebellum slave society, Forret builds on the work of Brenda E. Stevenson, Dylan C. Penningroth, and others to argue that the creation of social order was difficult and occasionally bloody work. Slave life was “marr…
Working the Mississippi: Two Centuries of Life on the River by Bonnie Stepenoff
The Mississippi River has seen a good amount of scholarly traffic in the last decade. Thomas Buchanan, Robert Gudmested, and Walter Johnson have plied its fast-moving and murky waters, examining, respectively, the black women and men who labored the river’s vessels, the role of steamboats in the creation of the cotton kingdom, and the river as metaphor: the “dark dream” of expansionist planters’ imaginings. Others, notably Ari Kelman and Christop…
Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery
Seth Rockman, professor of history at Brown University, is the author or editor of three books, as well as numerous essays, almost all of which explore the intersections of slavery and capitalism and slavery and technology. These interests frame his most recent work. A finalist for the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in History and winner of the 2025 Philip Taft Labor History Book Award, Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery follows northe…
History (8 works) · History (8 works) · Political science (6 works) · Sociology (5 works) · Law (4 works) · Law (4 works) · Race, History, and American Society (4 works) · Art (3 works) · Colonialism, slavery, and trade (3 works) · Economic history (3 works)