Vincent Brown (historian)

Vincent Brown is Charles Warren Professor of History, Professor of African and African-American Studies, and Director of the History Design Studio at Harvard University. His research, writing, teaching, and other creative endeavors are focused on the political dimensions of cultural practice in the African Diaspora, with a particular emphasis on the early modern Atlantic world.

A native of Southern California, Vincent Brown was educated at the University of California, San Diego, and received his PhD in History from Duke University, where he also trained in the theory and craft of film and video making. He is the author of numerous articles and reviews in scholarly journals, he is Principal Investigator and Curator for the animated thematic map Slave Revolt in Jamaica, 1760-1761: A Cartographic Narrative (2013), and he was Producer and Director of Research for the television documentary Herskovits at the Heart of Blackness (2009), recipient of the 2009 John E. O’Connor Film Award of the American Historical Association, awarded Best Documentary at both the 2009 Hollywood Black Film Festival and the 2009 Martha’s Vineyard African-American Film Festival, and broadcast nationally on season 11 of the PBS series Independent Lens. His first book, The Reaper’s Garden: Death and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery (2008), was co-winner of the 2009 Merle Curti Award and received the 2009 James A. Rawley Prize and the 2008-09 Louis Gottschalk Prize. Dr. Brown can be seen in the 2013 PBS documentary series The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross.

• 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship
• 2009 Merle Curti Award for The Reaper’s Garden: Death and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery
• 2009 James A. Rawley Prize for The Reaper’s Garden: Death and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery
• 2008-09 Louis Gottschalk Prize for The Reaper’s Garden: Death and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery

• John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

• "Slave Revolt in Jamaica, 1760-1761: A Cartographic Narrative". AxisMaps. 
• "Social Death and Political Life in the History of Atlantic Slavery: Between Resistance and Oblivion" (PDF). American Historical Review. 114 (5): 1231–1249. December 2009. doi:10.1086/ahr.114.5.1231. 
• Herskovits at the Heart of Blackness. Vital Pictures. 
• The Reaper’s Garden: Death and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery. Cambridge, M.A.: Harvard University Press. 2008. ISBN 978-0-674-02422-9. 
• "Eating the Dead: Consumption and Regeneration in the History of Sugar". Food and Foodways: History and Culture of Human Nourishment. 16 (2): 117–126. April 2008. doi:10.1080/07409710802085973. 
• "Spiritual Terror and Sacred Authority in Jamaican Slave Society". Slavery & Abolition. 24 (1): 24–53. April 2003. doi:10.1080/714005263. 
• "Blackness in Diaspora," in Plantation Society in the Americas Vol. VI, Nos 2&3 (Fall 1999): 305-12 (1999)