Research
Interests:
I have several current research interests. One is a contextual biography of Boston King that will not only investigate his life, but will also feature narratives on the personal, communal, and Atlantic-World levels, thus offering new ways to think about the construction of historical interpretation. Boston King was born into slavery in South Carolina in 1760, escaped to British lines during the American Revolution, and, with close to 3,000 other black loyalists, was evaluated to Nova Scotia in 1783. In 1792, he migrated to the new British colony of Sierra Leone, and in 1794 went to England to study to be a Methodist missionary; it was there he wrote his short autobiography, published in The Methodist Magazine. He returned to Sierra Leone in 1796 and died there in 1802. This project will offer insight into one man's experience as well as slavery, the American Revolution, empire, religion, and the black Atlantic at the end of the 18th century. More than that, its multi-leveled narrative will provide a new model for considering the individual in tension with greater community and wider Atlantic world trends. Another research interest is in American political culture, that is, how politics is practiced in America and the intersections among politics, power, and how policy is made in in its greater cultural context in contemporary America.
Selection
of Recent & Reoccurring Courses:
The Atlantic Wolrd; Colonial America; The Age of the American Revolution; Foundations of United States Policy; Topics in Early America; Slavery in the Americas
Biography:
Andy Schocket (Ph.D. College of William and Mary, 2001) is Associate Professor of History and author of Founding Corporate Power in Early America . That work found the use of the corporate form for business and for municipal governments as central to the political and economic settlement of the American Revolution, with corporations facilitating the centralization of economic and political power while also fostering economic growth and middle-class entrepreneurship in a period of electoral democratization. He is now working on a contextual biography of Boston King, which, in addition to King's life, will be an examination of revolution, empire, and the black Atlantic world in the late eighteenth century as well as an experiment in new kinds of historical narrative at the personal, communal, and Atlantic-world scales.
Selected
Publications:
Founding Corporate Power in Early National Philadelphia (Northern Illinois University Press, 2007).
"American Corporate Power: Like So Many Other Things, It's in the Founding," History News Network, 6-11-2007 (<http://hnn.us/articles/38870.html >)
"Review Essay: Freedom Given or Freedom Taken? Britain, the American Revolution, and the Black Loyalists," Itinerario; Winter 2006, Vol. 30, No. 2, 129-133.
"Thinking About Elites in the Early Republic," Journal of the Early Republic, Vol. 25, No. 4 (Winter 2005), 547-555.
James N. McCord, Jr. and Andrew M. Schocket, eds. Moving On: European, Atlantic and American Migration in the Age of Expansion and Settlement, 15th-20th Centuries. Student Papers from the EU/USA Intensive Conference/Workshop. Williamsburg: College of William & Mary, 1995.
Awards
and Honors:
Scholar in Residence, Institute for the Study of Culture & Society, Bowling Green State University, 2007-2008
Short-term Fellowship, Program in Early American Economy and Society at the Library Company of Philadelphia, 2002-2003
Canadian Studies Special Grant, International Council for Canadian Studies, 2002-2003
Trent R. Dames Civil Engineering History Fellowship, Huntington Library, 2001-2002
Grant-in-Aid, Center for Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library, 1999
Travel Grant, Society for the History of Technology, 1998
Sons of Cincinnati Dissertation Fellowship, 1996-1997 |
