Amanda Brickell Bellows ’08, Historian & Professor

I recently spoke to Amanda Brickell Bellows ’08, a historian of the United States in a comparative and transnational perspective. She currently teaches at Hunter College and The New School and works as a historian at the New-York Historical Society. Professor Bellows returned to Middlebury this past January to teach a survey course about human bondage, entitled Introduction to Global Slaveries: From Ancient Greece to the Present.

As an undergraduate at Middlebury, Professor Bellows was drawn to the flexibility of the history major, which allowed her to explore literature, art, and foreign language in her studies. Her senior thesis, a study of representations of Russian serfdom and American slavery in nineteenth-century literature, inspired a dissertation and finally book manuscript, Visualizations of Slavery and Serfdom in the Post-Emancipation Era, 1861-1915, currently under review for publication. Professor Bellows first noticed parallels between Russian and American bondage while studying under Middlebury professors John McCardell, an expert on the Civil War era, and James West, a scholar of imperial Russia. She remarks of her research, “My interest in serfdom and slavery developed at Middlebury, where I took courses not only about slavery and serfdom, but also about Russian and Southern literature. I noticed interesting similarities between the ways in which Russian and Southern landowners wrote about these two contemporaneous systems of bondage. American slavery and Russian serfdom were abolished just four years apart, but no scholar has yet published a monograph contrasting the post-emancipation periods in the United States and Russia. My book manuscript, examines this era through a cultural lens as the first comparative analysis of mass-oriented depictions of African American slaves and Russian serfs.” The breadth of resources that first drew her to the discipline of history are on display in her book manuscript, which draws from literature, advertisements, paintings, and illustrated periodicals.

After graduation from Middlebury, Professor Bellows entered an investment advisory firm, but soon realized her desire to return to academia. With the counsel of her Middlebury advisors, Professor Bellows considered many graduate programs, and ultimately embarked on a history Ph.D. program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2010. After graduating from UNC-Chapel Hill, she began a post-doctoral fellowship at the New-York Historical Society, New York City’s oldest history museum, and began teaching part-time at The New School and Hunter College. This fall, the New-Historical Society will mount the exhibit entitled Black Citizenship in the Jim Crow Era, which Professor Bellows helped design. Her involvement with the New-York Historical Society has allowed her to delve into public history and explore the unique challenges of crafting historical narratives for a nonacademic audience. Having completed her dissertation just two years ago, Professor Bellows has already taught at three universities and works at a prominent history museum. She suggests that, because universities and museums are hiring more graduates outside of the tenure track, young historians tend to be contemporaneously involved at a number of institutions.

Of her passion for academia, Professor Bellows remarks, “Teaching at a university or college gives you the opportunity to study what you love and to discuss exciting ideas with colleagues and students on a daily basis. As an academic, every day is different and interesting! You might spend your time digging through centuries-old documents in the archives, debating the significance of a historical event with colleagues, speaking publicly about your research at conferences, or writing articles and books. Academics enjoy variety, flexibility, and independence.” To Middlebury history majors considering graduate school, she advises, “I would encourage students to think expansively about career options and the ways in which they can use their historical skills. Those with doctorates in history can teach at the college or high-school levels or work as consultants, editors, curators, archivists, librarians, writers, foundation directors, and so much more!”

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