Seymour Drescher#

University Address:

Wesley W. Posvar Hall, Room 3707
History Department
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA 15260
(412) 648-7474
(412) 648-9074 (fax)

Education:

Bronx High School of Science, 1951
City College of New York, B.A. 1955
University of Wisconsin, M.S. 1956
Fulbright Scholar (Paris) 1957-1958
University of Wisconsin, Ph.D. 1960

Professional Organizations:

• American Historical Association
• Society for French Historical Studies
• North American Conference on British Studies
• Fulbright Association
• The Historical Society

Positions:

• Distinguished University Professor of History, and Sociology
• University of Pittsburgh, 1986-
• Chair, Department of History, 1980-1983
• Academic Dean, Semester-at-Sea, University of Pittsburgh, 1998, 2002
• Visiting Distinguished Professor, CUNY Graduate Center 1986, 1987, 1988
• Secretary, European Program, Woodrow Wilson International Center, 1984-85
• Professor of History, University of Pittsburgh, 1969-1986
• Visiting Professor, 1973, Carnegie-Mellon University
• Professor of Sociology (Joint Appointment, Pittsburgh), 1972-
• Associate Professor of History, Pittsburgh, 1965-1969
• Assistant Professor of History, Pittsburgh, 1962-1965
• Instructor in History, Harvard University, 1960-1962

General References:

Robert W. Fogel, Director, Center for Population Economics, Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago
Stanley Engerman, John H. Munro Professor of Economics and Professor of History, University of Rochester
David Brion Davis, Sterling Professor Emeritus, Yale University, School of English and American Studies, New Haven, Connecticut
David Eltis, Professor of History, Emory University, Atlanta, GA Kingston, Ontario, Canada

Film:

Confrontation: Paris 1968. Co-produced with Eugene McCreary and released for public screening in 1971. Presented for discussion at: American Historical Association (1970); University of Wisconsin (1971); American Historical Association (Western) (1972); American Educational Research Association (1973); Warwick University, England (1973); Kings College, London (1974); French Historical Studies, Berkeley (1977); Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (1984); CUNY Graduate Center (1987); University of Kentucky (1988); Villa Serbelloni, Bellagio (1990); Villa Serbelloni, Bellagio (1990); Cover Photo for Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement (1994).

Lectures and Presentations:

University of Indiana, 1969; University of Wisconsin, University of Kent, 1973; University of Edinburgh, 1974; University of Liverpool, 1974; University of Warwick, 1974; University of Canterbury, 1977; University of East Anglia, 1978; University of London, 1978; Bellagio Conference Center, 1978; University of Arizona, 1979; Theodore Heuss Akademie, Gummersbach, Germany, 1980; Harvard University 1980; Hamilton College, 1981; Hobart and William Smith College, 1981; University of Wisconsin, 1982; University of Hull, 1983; Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, 1984; University of Kent, 1984; Bellagio Conference Center, 1984; University of Warwick, 1984; University of Nantes, 1985; CUNY, 1985; Wesleyan University, 1985; Cooper Hewett Museum, 1985; Woodrow Wilson Center, 1986; University of Illinois (Urbana) 1987; Pittsburgh Center for Social History, 1987; Zagreb, Yugoslavia, 1988; American Historical Association, 1988. Symposium on the Effects of the French Revolution, Slippery Rock University, University Park, Penn State University, 1989; NEH-CUNY Institute on the French Revolution, CUNY/New York 1989. Rotary International, 1989; Allegheny College 1989; Hampden-Sydney College, 1989, Butler Community College, 1990 Duquesne University 1991; "British Abolition and American Emancipation," The Wilson Center Radio cassette dialogue (with Ira Berlin), The Wilson Center, 1984. "Slavery and Abolition" two hour interview edited by historian Christopher Moore, CBC Radio, Toronto, 1989. Participation at conferences of the American Educational Research Association, American Historical Association, French Historical Studies Association, Duquesne History Forum, Organization of American Historians; Bicentennial Conference on Comparative Slavery in Plantation Societies; Liverpool conference on the Slave Trade; Bellagio Conference on Religion, Antislavery and Reform; Internationales Symposion Zum 175 Geburstag von Alexis de Tocqueville; Sesquicentennial symposium on Tocqueville's Mosse, Journey; Festschrift Conference in Honor of George L. Mosse, University of Wisconsin. Sesquicentennial of the Abolition of British Slavery; Bellagio conference on British Capitalism and Slavery; International Conference on the Slave Trade; Sesquicentennial of Tocqueville's Democracy in America; Centennial of the Statue of Liberty, Cooper-Hewett Museum; Conference on the Concept of Liberty in America and France, Washington and Paris; Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, International Conference on Emancipation, Sao Paulo, Brazil; Negritude e Identidade nas Americas, Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto, Campus Mariana, Minas Gerais; Histories of Freedom: Citizens and Slaves in the Modern World, Universidade Estaduale de Campinas, Sao Paulo; Liberty of Expression, Wilson Center for Scholars, Washington, D.C.; 12th International Congress of Anthropology and Ethnological Sciences, Zagreb, Yugoslavia; The Meaning of Freedom, University of Pittsburgh; The Atlantic Slave Trade, University of Rochester; UNESCO Conference on Slavery Emancipation and the Shaping of Caribbean Society, University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago; The Conference on Latin American History, AHA, Cincinnati; International Conference on the History of French Revolution, Georgetown University, Washington D.C. National Endowment for the Humanities Institute on the French Revolution City University of New York, French Revolution Bicentennial Commemorations; International conference on Tocqueville's Democracy in America of 1840, Yale University; The Intellectual Revolt against Liberal Democracy 1870-1945, Israel Academy of Science, Jerusalem. French Historical Studies Association, Vancouver, British Columbia; Caribbean Studies Seminar, Institute for Commonwealth Studies, London; By Sea and by Air: Five Centuries of Interaction Between the Low Countries and the Americas, 1492-1992, University of Leiden, The Netherlands The Lesser Antilles in the Age of European Expansion: Hamilton College, Clinton NY.; University of Essex; Royal Institute of Linguistics and Anthropology (KITLV) Dutch Capitalism, slavery and antislavery. Institut Français de Washington Conference on "The French-American Connection," at Chapel Hill, N.C. Conference on Capitalism and Slavery: Fifty Years Later, at University of the West Indies, Trinidad; Conference on the Terms of Labor, at Washington University, St. Louis. Western Jewish Studies Association, University of Arizona, Tucson; The Jews and the Expansion of Europe to the West: 1450 to the Revolutions for Independence in the Americas, John Carter Brown Library. Seminar in Atlantic Studies, "After Slavery: Emancipation and its Discontents," University of East Anglia, Norwich. Tocqueville in Context, sponsored by Harvard Program on Constitutional Government and the Herbst Program of Humanities, Boulder, Colorado, Bard College; Haitian Revolution in Atlantic Context, Charleston, SC; Institute For Commonwealth Studies, London; Internal Slave Trades in the Americas, 1808-1888, Gerder Lehrman Institute, Yale University. “Eric E. Williams and the Pan Africanist Moment,” Wellesley College; Manumission in the Atlantic World, Charleston, SC; Slavery and Genocide, Conference, Gerder Lehrman Institute, Yale University; Conference on Factor Endowments, Labor and Economic Growth in the Americas, University of Rochester; “The Mansfield/Winthrop translation of Democracy in America,” American Political Science Association; “Loss of Freedom - Then and Now,” University of Rochester; Sisterhood and Slavery Conference, Gilder Lehrman Center, Yale University; “Race, Freedom and Bondage Conference, Yale University; The Historical Society, plenary session on “White Atlantic?”; “Reference Publishing and the Historian,” AHA annual meeting; Liberty Fund Colloquia on Tocqueville’s Old Regime (2003), Taine’s French Revolution (2004), and the “Liberty Test in Tocqueville’s Old Regime”, Two Colloquia on the Bicentennial of the Haitian Revolution, at the University of Pittsburgh and Brown University (2004); an international conference on “Where is Europe” at the University of Pittsburgh (2004); a colloquium on French Abolitionism at the University of Bretagne-Sud (2004); a conference in commemoration of the bicentennial of the birth of Alexis de Tocqueville in Cerisy-la-Salle, Normandy and Yale; Honors Lecturer, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (2006). Elsa V. Goveia Memorial Lecture, University of the West Indies, Barbados (2006); “Names on the Wall Conference,” Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation, Hull England (2006); Lecture: Gilder-Lehrman Center, “British Abolitionism and the Retreat of Slavery” (2006); Bicentenary Lecture “Emperors of the World,” Cambridge University (2007), Lecture: “Deadly Medicine,” Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh (2007); Lecture: Genocide and Human Rights,” Clarion University (2007); Presentation at the Accra/Elmina conference on the bicentennial of British Abolition (Ghana, 2007); Plenary presentation at the ASWAD conference (Barbados, 2007); presentation at Fordham University Bicentennial Commemoration (New York, 2007); Memorial presentation at Nantes (France, 2007); UNESCO Transatlantic Slave Trade Project symposium, Pittsburgh (2007) Keynote address at the bicentennial commemoration of the British abolition of the slave trade (2007); Conference: Tocqueville and Ortega y Gosset on individual liberty and the tyranny of the Majority (2008); Panelist at the North American Conference on British Studies (2008); Conference of Academia Europaea, University of Liverpool (2008); Crayenborgh lecturer on Inhuman Bondage at the University of Leiden (2009), Keynote speaker at the seminar on Spanish Slavery, Empire and Abolition in Comparative Perspective at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona (2009); Opening Speaker at the International Conference on “the effects of British slave trade abolition on national discourses” at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Social in Paris (2009).

Academic Honors, Positions, and Awards:

Meade Prize in History (C.C.N.Y.) 1955; Fulbright Scholar, 1957-1958; American Philosophical Society, 1965, 1975, 1985, 1987; Social Science Research Council, 1968; Pittsburgh University Center for International Studies (Grant-in-aid for film), 1969-1970; National Endowment for the Humanities, Senior Fellowship, 1973-1974; American Council of Learned Societies (Grants-in-aid), 1976, 1984; American Council of Learned Societies, Fellowship (unused), 1977-1978; John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, 1977-1978; Vice President, Society of French Historical Studies, 1978-1979; Various awards by the University of Pittsburgh Faculty; Research Funds and International Room Travel Grants, 1963-1980; Residency at the Bellagio Study Center, Rockefeller Foundation, 1980; Huntington Library Fellowship, 1982, 1983; National Endowment for the Humanities, grant for quantification of British Parliamentary Petitions, 1982-1984; Keynote Lecturer: Sesquicentennial of British Slave Emancipation 1983; Woodrow Wilson Center Fellow,1983-84; Roger T. Anstey Memorial Lecturer, 1984; Controle-reader of Tome III (Oeuvres Politiques), vol. 2 and 3, of the definitive edition of the Oeuvres of Tocqueville, Paris, Gallimard 1985-1990; Wesleyan University Lecturer: Reviewing the Canon in Afro-American Studies series 1985; Advisory Committee, Olin Seminar national Center for the, Humanities 1986-1989; Board of Editors, Slavery and Abolition 1985-; George A. Miller Lecturer, University of Illinois, 1987; Capitalism and Antislavery selected by Choice: Outstanding Academic Books (1988); Nominated for the executive Council of the American Historical Association, 1988; Lecturer, Commonwealth Speakers Program, 1989, 1991; Advisor to Woodrow Wilson Center Fellowship Committee, 1989-; Residency at Bellagio Study Center 1990; University of Pittsburgh Distinguished Research Award, 1991; Advisor, NEH Media Grants Committee, 1991; UCIS Senior Research Fellowship 1993, 2000, University of Pittsburgh; Listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in the World; Editor, Journal of Contemporary History, 1992-1999; Member, Herbert Baxter Adams book prize committee, 1993-1996; Convocation Address, University of Pittsburgh at Titusville, September 1993. Commission nationale for the publication of the writings of Tocqueville, 1994-; member, Koninklijk Instituut voor Tal-, Land-en Volkenkunde, 1993-; member Alexis de Tocqueville Advisory Committee (CSPAN), 1995-1998; Black Liberty Project, 1998-2000; History Society, book prize committee, 2001; Gilder Lehrman Center, annual book award committee, 2002; Guest scholar at the University of Bretagne-Sud, May-June 2003., The Mighty Experiment recipient of the Frederick Douglass Book Prize (first prize) by Yale’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery and Abolition (2003). Delivered the Elsa V. Goveia Memorial Lecture at the University of the West Indies (Barbados) (2006); inaugural conference of WISE the Wilberforce Institute for the study of Slavery and Emancipation (2006); Advisory Board of Alexander Hamilton Center for the Study of Western Civilization, Hamilton College, (2007); Member of the National Board of Trustees, at Beecher House Center for the Study of Equal Rights (2007); a member of the Academia Europaea, the Academy of Europe (May 2009).