Faculty and Staff
S. Max Edelson
Associate Professor of History
(217) 244-2086
edelson@illinois.edu
Department of History
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
309 Gregory Hall, MC-466
810 South Wright St.
Urbana, IL 61801
Employment
2007- Associate Professor of History, UIUC
2001-2007 Assistant Professor of History, UIUC
1998–2001 Assistant Professor of History, Co-director, Program in the Carolina Lowcountry and the Atlantic World College of Charleston
Education
1999, Ph.D. The Johns Hopkins University
1997, M.A. The Johns Hopkins University, Distinction in all Fields
1994, M.Litt. University of Oxford
1992, B.A. Cornell University, Magna Cum Laude
1988-1990 Attended Deep Springs College
1987-1988 Attended Reed College
Publications
Plantation Enterprise in Colonial South Carolina (Harvard University Press, 2006)
• Winner of the 2006 George C. Rogers Jr. Book Award, South Carolina Historical Society
• Winner of the 2006 Theodore Saloutos Memorial Award, Agricultural History Society“Reproducing Plantation Society: Women and Land in Colonial South Carolina,” History of the Family 12:2 (2007): 130-141.
“Clearing Swamps, Harvesting Forests: Trees and the Making of a Plantation Landscape in the Colonial South Carolina Lowcountry,”Agricultural History, 81:3 (Summer, 2007): 381-406.
“The Nature of Slavery: Environmental Disorder and Slave Agency in Colonial South Carolina” in Robert Olwell and Alan Tully, eds., Cultures and Identities in Colonial British America. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005.
“The Characters of Commodities: The Reputations of South Carolina Rice and Indigo in the Atlantic World,” in Peter A. Coclanis, ed., The Atlantic Economy during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Organization, Operation, Practice, and Personnel. University of South Carolina Press, 2005.
“Carolinians Abroad: Cultivating English Identities from the Colonial Lower South,” in Joseph P. Ward, ed., Britain and the American South: From Colonialism to Rock and Roll. University Press of Mississippi, 2003.
“Affiliation without Affinity: Skilled Slaves in Eighteenth-Century South Carolina,” in Jack P. Greene, Rosemary Brana-Shute, and Randy J. Sparks, eds., Money, Trade, and Power: The Evolution of South Carolina's Plantation Society. University of South Carolina Press, 2001.
Professional Presentations & Papers (since 2005)
“Scale and Interpretation: Writing the Environmental History of Colonial British America,” American Historical Association Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C., January 3-6, 2008“Slavery, Tyranny, and Paternalism: Reconsidering Henry Laurens as an Exemplar Master for the Age of Revolution,” Conference on “From Colonies into Republics in an Atlantic World: North America and the Caribbean in a Revolutionary Age,” University Paris 7-Denis Diderot University of Orleans, Paris, France, December 7-9, 2006
“‘All may fall’: The Commercial Impact of the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 on the British Atlantic World,” Social Science History Association Annual Meeting, Minneapolis, MN, November 2-5, 2006.
Keynote Address, “Islands and Continents: Rediscovering Plantation America,” History Department-HGSA Conference on “Radical Environments, Contested Landscapes, and Mental Geographies,” Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, IL, April 7, 2006.
“Empire of Disorder: Representations of the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 in the Atlantic World,” Annual Meeting of the American Society for Environmental History, St. Paul, MN, March 29-April 2, 2006. Panel Coordinator, “Natural Disasters in the Early Modern Atlantic World.”
“Core and Frontier: Geographies of Production and Consumption in Colonial South Carolina’s Plantation Society,” American Material Life Seminar, University of Illinois at Springfield, IL, November 7, 2005.
“Aftershock: The Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 and the Fate of Empire in the Atlantic World,” International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World, 1500-1825, Tenth Anniversary Conference on Atlantic History: Soundings, Cambridge, MA, August 8-13, 2005.
“From Mulberry to Palmetto: Trees, Culture, and Colonization in South Carolina,” USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute, Conference on Plants and Insects in the Early Modern World, San Marino, CA, on April 29-30, 2005.
Undergraduate courses currently offered at UIUC
HIST 171 History of the United States to 1877
HIST 370 Colonial US (“Encounters and Experiences in Colonial British America”)
HIST 200E Intro. to Historical Interpretation (“Mapping the New World: Cartography and Colonization in Early America”)
HIST470 Plantation Society in the Americas (also offered as AFRO 453)
Graduate courses offered at UIUC
Problems in U.S. History to 1830
“Material Culture”
“Slavery and Modernity”
“The Atlantic World”
Problems in Comparative History
“Environmental History”
“Cartography and Colonization in Spanish and British America”
Introduction to Problems in American History
Scholarships, Grants, & Awards (since 2000)
2007-2008 Kislak Fellowship in American Studies, Library of Congress
2007-2008 Helen Corley Petit Scholar, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, UIUC
2007 Theodore Saloutos Memorial Book Award, Agricultural History Society
2007 George C. Rogers Jr. Book Award, South Carolina Historical Society
2006 Fall, Included on “List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by their Students”
2006 “Learning from Lisbon: Earthquakes, Empires, and the Calculation of Risk in the Early Modern Atlantic World,” Earth and Society Program Summer Research Grant, Environmental Council UIUC ($13,000)
2006 “Mapping Landscape Change in Colonial South Carolina,” UIUC Research Board ($2,000)
2005 Spring, Included on “List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by their Students”
2005 College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Alumni Discretionary Award, UIUC
2004 Fall, Included on “List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by their Students”
2004 Mellon Foundation Faculty Fellowship
2002-2003 Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities Faculty Fellowship, UIUC
2002 “Planting the Wastelands: Environment, Economy, and Colonization in Early South Carolina, 1670-1785,” UIUC Research Board ($3,100)
2000 National Endowment for the Humanities, Regional Humanities Center Planning Grant: South Atlantic Region Finalist, Co-Principal Investigator ($50,000)
Professional Service
Program in the Carolina Lowcountry and the Atlantic World
Conferences Organized
“The Material Worlds of Tidewater, Lowcountry, and Caribbean,” June 7-9, 2002
“From Slavery to Freedom: Manumission in the Atlantic World,” October 4-7, 2000
“The Emergence of the Atlantic Economy,” October 14-16, 1999
Early America and the Atlantic World Reading Group, founder and co-organizer, Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities, UIUC, 2004-2007
Cartography, History, Geography Reading Group, founder and organizer, Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities, UIUC, 2008-
External Reviewer: Agricultural History, American Historical Review, Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, Food and Foodways, Johns Hopkins University Press, Oxford University Press, Plantation Society in the Americas, University of Illinois Press, University of South Carolina Press, William and Mary Quarterly, South Carolina Historical Society, Tulane University, University Press of Virginia.
Community Service
Telluride Association, 1991-present, a private foundation based in Ithaca, N.Y., that sponsors programs encouraging self-governance and intellectual community life for college and high school students throughout the United States.
Vice-Chair, Deep Springs College Investment Committee, 2006-