BrettGoodin
researches the United States in the world in the eighteenth and nineteenthcenturies. His first book, FromCaptives to Consuls (JohnsHopkins University Press, October 2020) is a collective biographythat explores the meandering life courses of three American sailorswho were held as white slaves in the North African “BarbaryStates.” The book is a study of the predominant type of self-mademen in the early American republic, who typically moved sidewaysrather than upward, and influenced and reflected Americannation-building and evolving concepts of liberty, masculinity andnationhood in the early republic through the Jacksonian era. He isnow working on a new book project, Conflict,Commerce and Self-discovery: American sailors and the Asia-Pacific,1784-1914,about the role of American sailors in the Asia-Pacific and how theyleveraged their experiences to shape domestic developments inscience, culture and politics within the U.S.
Priorto joining ShanghaiTech, Dr. Goodin taught at New York University inShanghai, and the Australian National University. He has also heldpostdoctoral fellowships at the Smithsonian Institution in WashingtonDC, in addition to the Library Company of Philadelphia and HistoricalSociety of Pennsylvania. His research has also been supported byfellowships from the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University,the American Philosophical Society, the International Center ofJefferson Studies at Monticello, the Huntington Library, the DavidLibrary of the American Revolution, and the Library Company ofPhiladelphia and Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
Educationalbackground:
2011-2016Ph.D.in American history, Australian National University.
Dissertation:“Opportunities of Empire: Three Barbary captives and Americannation-building, 1770-1840”
2006-2009B.A., FirstClass Honors, Australian National University. Majors: History,Philosophy, Political Science
Prioremployment:
2019-2021:Global Perspectives on Society Postdoctoral Fellow, New YorkUniversity, Shanghai
2019:Program in Early American Economy & Society postdoctoral fellowat the Library Company of Philadelphia
2018: Adjunctlecturer, Australian National University
2017:John R. Bockstoce Fellow, John Carter Brown Library, Brown University
2016-2017:Margaret Henry Dabney Penick Resident Scholar, postdoctoral fellow,Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC
Publications:
FromCaptives to Consuls: Three Sailors in Barbary and Their Self-MakingAcross the Early American Republic, 1770-1840(Johns Hopkins University Press, October 2020)
“TwoBarbary Captives: Allegiance Through Self-Interest and InternationalNetworks, 1785-1796” (PennsylvaniaMagazine of History and Biography,forthcoming)
“Business,Personality and Discretionary Power of American Consuls in NorthAfrica, 1797-1805,” HuntingtonLibrary Quarterly,Vol. 80, No. 4 (December 2017)
“NegotiatingLiberty: The Use of Political Opportunities and Civil Society byBarbary State Captives and Guantánamo Bay Detainees,” coauthoredwith Cynthia Banham, AustralianJournal of Politics and History,Vol. 62, No. 2 (June 2016)
“AfricanAmerican Education Facilitating Migration, 1865-1920,”Melbourne Historical Journal,vol. 42 (2014)
Researchinterests:
UnitedStates and the World, 1770-1870; maritime history; captivity studies;African American history Reconstruction to Great Migration; historyof masculinity; United States social and political history 1918-1975.