Seth E. Rockman is an American historian and scholar who specialises in the history of slavery, labour, and capitalism in the early United States. He is best known for Scraping By: Wage Labour, Slavery, and Survival in Early Baltimore (2009) and Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery (2024). He is an associate professor of history at Brown University and an elected member of the American Antiquarian Society.
Seth E. Rockman received his BA from Columbia University in 1993, graduating Phi Beta Kappa. He received his Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Davis, in 1999. His academic work has focused on the intersecting structures of slavery and wage labor, using material culture to examine how these systems shaped everyday life in the early republic.
His first book, Scraping By, published in 2009, examined the lives of Baltimore's working poor in the early nineteenth century. It won several awards, including the Merle Curti Prize in Social History, the Philip Taft Labor History Book Award, the H.L. Mitchell Prize, and the Joseph Arnold Prize. These awards recognised him as a leading figure in reexamining labour and inequality in early American cities.
In 2016, Rockman co-edited Slavery's Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development, contributing to a growing scholarly effort to rethink the connections between slavery and modern economic systems. His essay "Negro Cloth: Mastering the Market for Slave Clothing in Antebellum America," appeared in American Capitalism: New Histories (2018) and examined the production of textiles for enslaved people.
In 2021, Rockman contributed "The Dialectics of Racism and Repair" to Brown University's Slavery and Justice Report, second edition. That same year, he was named a Gordon Cain Fellow at the Science History Institute and spent 2021–22 in residence at re:work, a Berlin-based research institute. This work supported the publication of Der alte und der neue Materialismus in der Geschichte der Sklaverei (2022).
His most recent book, Plantation Goods, was published by the University of Chicago Press in November 2024. The book explores the material world of slavery through the objects used, worn, and produced on plantations. Drawing on textile samples, tools, and commercial records, it shows how material culture shaped enslaved life and capitalist enterprise.
Seth E. Rockman is currently Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of History at Brown University. He is the recipient of the William G. McLaughlin Award for Excellence in Teaching and an OAH Distinguished Lecturer.
Photo credit: vivo.brown.edu
Seth E. Rockman received his BA from Columbia University in 1993, graduating Phi Beta Kappa. He received his Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Davis, in 1999. His academic work has focused on the intersecting structures of slavery and wage labor, using material culture to examine how these systems shaped everyday life in the early republic.
His first book, Scraping By, published in 2009, examined the lives of Baltimore's working poor in the early nineteenth century. It won several awards, including the Merle Curti Prize in Social History, the Philip Taft Labor History Book Award, the H.L. Mitchell Prize, and the Joseph Arnold Prize. These awards recognised him as a leading figure in reexamining labour and inequality in early American cities.
In 2016, Rockman co-edited Slavery's Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development, contributing to a growing scholarly effort to rethink the connections between slavery and modern economic systems. His essay "Negro Cloth: Mastering the Market for Slave Clothing in Antebellum America," appeared in American Capitalism: New Histories (2018) and examined the production of textiles for enslaved people.
In 2021, Rockman contributed "The Dialectics of Racism and Repair" to Brown University's Slavery and Justice Report, second edition. That same year, he was named a Gordon Cain Fellow at the Science History Institute and spent 2021–22 in residence at re:work, a Berlin-based research institute. This work supported the publication of Der alte und der neue Materialismus in der Geschichte der Sklaverei (2022).
His most recent book, Plantation Goods, was published by the University of Chicago Press in November 2024. The book explores the material world of slavery through the objects used, worn, and produced on plantations. Drawing on textile samples, tools, and commercial records, it shows how material culture shaped enslaved life and capitalist enterprise.
Seth E. Rockman is currently Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of History at Brown University. He is the recipient of the William G. McLaughlin Award for Excellence in Teaching and an OAH Distinguished Lecturer.
Photo credit: vivo.brown.edu
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