Associate Professor of History

Overview

Seth Rockman became the George L. Littlefield Professor of American History in July 2025. His research unfolds at the intersection of slavery studies, labor history, material culture studies, the history of capitalism, and the early republic United States. Rockman’s award-winning Scraping By: Wage Labor, Slavery, and Survival in Early Baltimore (2009) and the co-edited volume Slavery’s Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development (2016) sought to better understand the relationship of slavery and capitalism in the American past. Rockman's 2024 book, Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize in History and the Mark Lynton History Prize, in addition to winning the Philip Taft Labor History Book Award. 

 

Rockman currently serves as the director of undergraduate studies in the Department of History. 

 

Brown Affiliations

Research Areas

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