Martha Hodes

Martha Hodes

Professor of History

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; New York Institute for the Humanities, elected lifetime fellow.

 

SPECIAL APPOINTMENTS

  • 2025-26 President, Society of American Historians
  • 2021-23 Interim Director, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, New York Public Library

Books

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

  • “The Diary of a Twelve-Year-Old Hostage: Erasure and Survival in Family Memories, Stories, and Archives”
    Scholars and Their Kin: Historical Explorations, Literary Experiments, ed. Stéphane Gerson
    University of Chicago Press, 2025
  • “Unimaginable Catastrophe: The Nation’s First Presidential Assassination”
    Mourning the Presidents, ed. Lindsay M. Chervinsky and Matthew Costello
    University of Virginia Press, 2023
  • "History Unclassified: As If I Wasn’t There: Writing from a Child’s Memory"
    American Historical Review
    Volume 127, June 2022
  • “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, 2022
  • "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