Dr. Amanda Bellows on American Slavery and Russian Serfdom after Emancipation

Dr. Amanda Bellows joins Thomas Thurston in the studio to discuss how emancipated serfs and slaves were viewed in Russian and American music, literature, art and popular culture during the late nineteenth century.

Amanda Bellows is a historian of the United States in comparative and transnational perspective. She earned her Ph.D. in History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  Her manuscript, “American Slavery and Russian Serfdom in the Postemancipation Imagination” will be published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2020. Her writing has appeared in the Journal of Global Slavery, Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, the New York Times, Talking Points Memo, and Public Seminar.

Recommended Resources:

• Peter Kolchin, Unfree Labor: American Slavery and Russian Serfdom (Harvard University Press, 1987).
• John MacKay, True Songs of Freedom: Uncle Tom’s Cabin in Russian Culture and Society (University of Wisconsin Press, 2013).
• John MacKay, Four Russian Serf Narratives (University of Wisconsin Press, 2009).
• K. Stephen Prince, Stories of the South: Race and the Reconstruction of Southern Identity, 1865-1915 (The University of North Carolina Press, 2014).

“Slavery and Its Legacies” is available on iTunes and SoundCloud. Email comments and suggestions to gilder.lehrman.center@yale.edu with subject line “podcast”