Martha Hodes

Martha Hodes

Professor of History

SPECIAL APPOINTMENT

  • 2021-23 Interim Director, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, New York Public Library

Education

Princeton University, PhD 1991, MA 1987

Harvard University, MA, 1984 

Bowdoin College, BA, 1980

Areas of Research/Interest

19th-century United States; race; Civil War and Reconstruction; gender; craft of historical writing; history and memory

Fellowships & Honors

(Selected)

John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation; Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, New York Public Library; Harvard University, Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History; Massachusetts Historical Society-National Endowment for the Humanities; Fulbright Scholar, Germany; Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library; National Endowment for the Humanities; American Council of Learned Societies; Whiting Foundation; Society of American Historians, elected lifetime member.

 

Books

  • Mourning Lincoln
    Yale University Press, 2015​
    Mourning Lincoln
  • The Sea Captain's Wife: A True Story of Love, Race, and War in the Nineteenth Century
    W.W. Norton, 2006
    The Sea Captain's Wife: A True Story of Love, Race, and War in the Nineteenth Century
  • White Women, Black Men: Illicit Sex in the Nineteenth-Century South
    Yale University Press, 1997
    White Women, Black Men: Illicit Sex in the Nineteenth-Century South
  • Sex, Love, Race: Crossing Boundaries in North American History
    New York University Press, 1999, edited collection
    Sex, Love, Race: Crossing Boundaries in North American History

book awards

Mourning Lincoln

Lincoln Book Prize, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History; Avery O. Craven Award, Organization of American Historians; National Book Award longlist finalist; Editor’s Choice, Sunday New York Times Book Review; Best Civil War Books of 2015, Civil War Monitor; Best Books of 2015, Wall Street Journal

The Sea Captain's Wife: A True Story of Love, Race, and War in the Nineteenth Century

Finalist, Lincoln Book Prize, Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History; Best Books of 2006, Library Journal

White Women, Black Men: Illicit Sex in the Nineteenth-Century South

Allan Nevins Prize for Literary Distinction in the Writing of History, Society of American Historians; Honorable Mention, Outstanding Book, Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights

Selected Articles

  • "History Unclassified: As If I Wasn’t There: Writing from a Child’s Memory"
    American Historical Review
    forthcoming, June 2022
  • “Unimaginable Catastrophe: The Nation’s First Presidential Assassination”
    Mourning the Presidents, ed. Lindsay M. Chervinsky and Matthew Costello
    University of Virginia Press, forthcoming
  • “Two Catastrophes and Ten Parallels: Lincoln’s Assassination and Covid-19”
    After Life: Death and Loss in 2020 America, ed. Keri Leigh Merritt, Rhae Lynn Barnes, Yohuru Williams
    Haymarket Books, forthcoming
  • "Utter Confusion and Contradiction: Franz Boas and the Problem of Human Complexion"
    Indigenous Visions: Rediscovering the World of Franz Boas, ed. Ned Blackhawk and Isaiah Wilner
    Yale University Press, 2018
  • "Lincoln’s Black Mourners: Submerged Voices, Everyday Life, and the Question of Storytelling"
    Archives and Methods in the Study of Slavery and Freedom Social Text
    volume 125, December 2015
  • "The Power of Indifference: Violence, Visibility, and Invisibility in the New York City Race Riot of 1900"
    Violence and Visibility in Modern History, ed. Jürgen Martschukat and Silvan Niedermeier
    Palgrave-Macmillan, 2013
  • "Knowledge and Indifference in the New York City Race Riot of 1900: An Argument in Search of a Story"
    Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice
    volume 15, March 2011
  • "A Story With an Argument: Writing the Transnational Life of a Sea Captain’s Wife"
    Transnational Lives: Biographies of Global Modernity, 1700-Present, ed. Desley Deacon, Penny Russell, Angela Woollacott
    Palgrave Macmillan, 2010
  • "Fractions and Fictions in the United States Census of 1890"
    Haunted by Empire: Geographies of Intimacy in North American History, ed. Ann Laura Stoler
    Duke University Press, 2006
  • "Four Episodes in Re-Creating a Life"
    Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice
    volume 10, June 2006
  • "The Mercurial Nature and Abiding Power of Race: A Transnational Family Story"
    American Historical Review
    volume 108, Feb. 2003

Selected Public Media

  • "House Divided"
    Review of Michael Burlingame, An American Marriage: The Untold Story of Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd
    Wall Street Journal, July 15, 2021
  • "Public Thinker: David Blight on Frederick Douglass, Abolition, and Memory"
    Interview with David Blight, Yale University
    Public Books, November 26, 2018
  • "Why Some White Americans See Racial Equality as Oppression: White Victimhood’s Roots in the Civil War"
    Made By History column
    Washington Post, August 27, 2018
  • "What Lincoln Left Behind"
    New York Times op-ed, April 14, 2015
  • "How Abraham Lincoln Said that Black Lives Matter"
    Los Angeles Times op-ed, Sunday, March 1, 2015
  • "A Nation United in Mourning Lincoln? Think Again"
    Interview, Boston Globe, Sunday, February 22, 2015
  • "‘They have killed our good president’: Remembering the Horror of the Lincoln Assassination"
    Salon.com, February 16, 2015
  • "How America Moved on in the Days After the Civil War"
    PBS News Hour, 2015