David W. Blight

David William Blight (born 1949) is the Sterling Professor of History, of African American Studies, and of American Studies and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University. Previously, Blight was a professor of History at Amherst College, where he taught for 13 years. He has won several awards, including the Bancroft Prize and Frederick Douglass Prize for Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, and the Pulitzer Prize and Lincoln Prize for Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom.

David W. Blight
David W. Blight at the 2019 National Book Festival
Born
David William Blight

(1949-03-21) March 21, 1949
Flint, Michigan, US
Spouse(s)
Karin B. H. Beckett
(
m. 1987)
Awards
Academic background
Alma mater
ThesisKeeping Faith in Jubilee (1985)
Academic work
Discipline
Sub-disciplineAmerican history
Institutions
Notable works
Websitedavidwblight.com

Early life and education

Born March 21, 1949, Blight was born and raised in Flint, Michigan. After earning his undergraduate degree from Michigan State University in 1971, Blight taught in a public high school for seven years. He received his Master of Arts degree in American history from Michigan State in 1976 and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in the discipline from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1985 with a dissertation titled Keeping Faith in Jubilee: Frederick Douglass and the Meaning of the Civil War.[1]

Career

Following stints at North Central College (1982–1987) and Harvard University (1987–1989), Blight taught at Amherst College from 1990 to 2003. In 2001, he published Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. It "presented a new way of understanding the nation's collective response to the war, arguing that, in the interest of reunification, the country ignored the racist underpinnings of the war, leaving a legacy of racial conflict."[2] The book earned Blight both the Bancroft Prize and Frederick Douglass Prize.

After being hired by Yale in 2003 and teaching as a full professor, in 2006 Blight was selected to direct the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition. His primary focus is on the American Civil War and its aftermath.

Blight is chiefly concerned with studying the ways American society grappled with the war in its aftermath. His work, A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation (2007), provides context for newly discovered first-person accounts by two African-American slaves who escaped during the Civil War and emancipated themselves.

He also lectures for One Day University. In Spring 2008, Blight recorded a 27-lecture course, The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845–1877 for Open Yale Courses, which is available online.

Blight wrote Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, released in 2018 as the first major biography of Douglass in nearly three decades. One reviewer called it "the definitive biography of Frederick Douglass" and another heralded the book as "the new Frederick Douglass standard-bearer for years to come."[3][4] It earned the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in history and the 2019 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize.[5]

Contributing to the anthology Our American Story (2019), Blight addressed the possibility of a shared American narrative. He cited Frederick Douglass's 1867 speech titled "Composite Nation" calling for a "multi-ethnic, multi-racial 'nation' ... incorporated into this new vision of a 'composite' nationality, separating church and state, giving allegiance to a single new constitution, federalizing the Bill of Rights, and spreading liberty more broadly than any civilization had ever attempted". Blight concluded that although the search for a new unified American story would be difficult, "we must try."[6]

Awards

Works

Books as author
  • David W. Blight (1991). Frederick Douglass' Civil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee. LSU Press. ISBN 978-0-8071-1724-8.
  • Frederick Douglass (1993). Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Introduction David W. Blight. Bedford Books of St. Martin's Press.
  • David W. Blight (2001). Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-00819-9.
  • David W. Blight (2002). Beyond the Battlefield: Race, Memory & the American Civil War. University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 978-1-55849-361-2.
  • David W. Blight (2007). A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 978-0-15-101232-9.
  • David W. Blight (2011). American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era. Belknap Press. ISBN 978-0-67-404855-3.
  • David W. Blight (2018). Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1-4165-9031-6.

Books as contributor
  • (Contributor) "Composite Nation?", Joshua Claybourn, ed. (2019). Our American Story: The Search for a Shared National Narrative. Potomac Books. ISBN 978-1640121706.

References
  1. David W. Blight. "Keeping Faith in Jubilee: Frederick Douglass and the Meaning of the Civil War"
  2. "David W. Blight" Archived 2008-01-27 at the Wayback Machine, History Dept., Yale University, 2007, accessed 27 April 2012
  3. Glaude, Eddie (12 October 2018). "Complex look at Frederick Douglass with a lesson for Trump era". Boston Globe. Retrieved 6 March 2019.
  4. Claybourn, Joshua. "A review of 'Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom' by David W. Blight". Compulsive Reader.
  5. "David Blight Awarded the 2019 Lincoln Prize for "Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom"". the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Retrieved 6 March 2019.
  6. Claybourn, Joshua, ed. (2019). Our American Story: The Search for a Shared National Narrative. Lincoln, NE: Potomac Books. pp. 3–18. ISBN 978-1640121706.
  7. Race and Reunion and prizes, Harvard University Press, accessed 27 April 2012
  8. "David W. Blight Receives 2012 Anisfield-Wolf Book Prize" Archived 2006-06-20 at the Wayback Machine, The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, Yale University, accessed 27 April 2012
Academic offices
Preceded by
Jeffrey C. Alexander		 Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions
2012–2013		 Succeeded by
Barry Eichengreen
Non-profit organization positions
Preceded by
Patricia Nelson Limerick		 President of the Society of American Historians
2013–2014		 Succeeded by
David Nasaw
Awards
Preceded by
David Eltis		 Frederick Douglass Prize
2001		 Succeeded by
Robert W. Harms
Succeeded by
John Stauffer
Preceded by
Michael A. Bellesiles		 Bancroft Prize
2002
With: Alice Kessler-Harris		 Succeeded by
James F. Brooks
Preceded by
Susan Lee Johnson		 Succeeded by
Alan Gallay
Preceded by
David Nasaw
Preceded by
Sherry L. Smith		 James A. Rawley Prize of the
Organization of American Historians
2002
With: J. William Harris		 Succeeded by
Sharla M. Fett
Succeeded by
Shane White
Preceded by
Russell Weigley		 Lincoln Prize
2002		 Succeeded by
George C. Rable
Preceded by
David Eltis and David Richardson		 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Nonfiction
2012
With: David Livingstone Smith		 Succeeded by
Andrew Solomon
Preceded by
Isabel Wilkerson
Preceded by
Edward L. Ayers		 Lincoln Prize
2019		 Most recent
Preceded by
Jack E. Davis		 Pulitzer Prize for History
2019
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.