Ryan Quintana
Associate Professor of History
Historian of slavery, space and governance in the 18th and 19th Centuries
I am an historian of slavery, emancipation, space, and governance in the 18th and 19th century Anglo-American world. My first book, Making a Slave State: Political Development in Early South Carolina (UNC Press, 2018), examined the various ways enslaved men and women sat at the center of South Carolina’s earliest political development, materially producing the state’s infrastructure and early governing practices, while also challenging and reshaping both through their day-to-day movements. My current research focuses on the everyday governing practices of emancipation in the broader Anglo-American world from the late 18th century to the American Civil War. I am currently completing an article on the early roots of compensated emancipation that examines state-funded indemnities made to slave-owners upon the criminal execution of enslaved men and women.
In addition to the history of slavery and emancipation, I am broadly interested in the history of race, liberalism, capitalism, and the rise of the modern state throughout the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At Wellesley, these interests are made manifest in my courses, all of which cover the period between the Seven Years War and the Great Depression. These include courses on the American South, the trans-Mississippi West, and the social history of American Capitalism.
COURSES
HIST244 History of the American West: Manifest Destiny to Pacific Imperialism
HIST245 The Social History of American Capitalism from Revolution to Empire
HIST261 The Civil War and the World
HIST267 Deep in the Heart: The American South in the Nineteenth Century
HIST311 Seminar: A New Birth of Freedome: Reimagining American History from Revolution to Civil War
HIST312 Seminar: Understanding Race in the United States, 1776-1918
Education
- B.A., The University of Tennessee
- M.A., University of Wisconsin-Madison
- Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison
Current and upcoming courses
History of the American West: Manifest Destiny to Pacific Imperialism
HIST244
With its sweeping landscapes, grand myths, and oversized egos, the American West has loomed large within U.S. history. Since the nation's birth, Americans looked toward the horizon and imagined their destinies, a gaze, since copied by historians, novelists, and filmmakers. Nevertheless, the history of this vast region is much more fractured and complex. This course explores the West-as an idea and place-from the early nineteenth century through World War I. While we will engage the ways that Americans conjured and conquered the region, we will also look beyond their gaze toward the varied empires, peoples, and forces that created the West. Topics covered include: Northern New Spain and Mexico; American Indians and U.S. expansionism; transcontinental and trans-Pacific trade and (im)migration; race, gender, and identity.
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The Social History of American Capitalism from Revolution to Empire
HIST245
There is perhaps no better time than the present to study the history of American capitalism, as political leaders, pundits, bank and business executives, and workers across the world struggle to understand our current economic situation. This course will explore the development of American capitalism from its birth in the mercantile world of imperial Great Britain through the financial ruin of the Great Depression. This course will closely examine the relationship between government, business, and society by engaging key moments in nineteenth-century American economic history: the rise of the corporation, transportation and communication innovations, industrialization, American slavery and commodity production, financial speculation and panics, the development of American banking, immigration policy, and labor relations.