KATHARINE GERBNER 1660 Hague Ave St. Paul, MN 55104 kgerbner@umn.edu 215-687-5152 CURRENT POSITION University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN McKnight Land Grant Professor, 2018-2020 Assistant Professor of History, 2013 present Affiliated Faculty, Religious Studies EDUCATION Harvard University, Cambridge, MA Ph.D., History of American Civilization, 2013 A.M., History, 2009 Columbia University, New York, NY B.A. cum laude, Religion (Honors), 2006 PUBLICATIONS Book Christian Slavery: Conversion and Race in the Protestant Atlantic World, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018. Edited Journal Issue Missionary Encounters in the Atlantic World, co-edited with Karin Vélez, Journal for Early Modern History 21, nos. 1/2 (2017). Peer-reviewed Articles Writing Against Slavery: Germantown, Quakers, and the Ethnic Origins of Early Anti-Slavery Thought in Babel of the Atlantic: Language and Cultural Politics in Colonial Pennsylvania, ed. Bethany Wiggin (Penn State University Press, forthcoming). They Call Me Obea : German Moravian Missionaries and Afro-Caribbean Religion in Jamaica, 1754-1760, Atlantic Studies 12:2 (2015), 160-178. Theorizing Conversion: Christianity, Colonization, and Consciousness in the Early Modern Atlantic World, History Compass 13:3 (2015), 134-147. Beyond the Halfway Covenant : Church Membership, Extended Baptism, and Outreach in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1656-1667, The New England Quarterly 85:2 (2012), 281-301. Antislavery in Print: The Germantown Protest, the Exhortation, and the Seventeenth-Century Quaker Debate on Slavery, Early American Studies 9:3 (2011), 552-575.
Gerbner C.V. 2 The Ultimate Sin: Christianising Slaves on 17 th century Barbados, Slavery and Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-slave Studies 31:1 (2010), 57-73. We are against the traffik of men-body : The Germantown Quaker Protest of 1688 and the Origins of American Abolitionism. Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies 74:2 (2007), 149-172. Book Reviews North America s Maroons, William & Mary Quarterly, 3 rd Ser., 73:3 (2016), 576-581 Faithful Bodies: Performing Religion and Race in the Puritan Atlantic by Heather Miyano Kopelson (New York/London: New York University Press). Church History and Religion Culture 95 (2015), 364-6. Slaves and Englishmen: Human Bondage in the Early Modern Atlantic by Michael Guasco (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014). Journal of Early American History 5 (2015), 190-1. The Baptism of Early Virginia: How Christianity Created Race by Rebecca Anne Goetz (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012). Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 111:3 (2013), 439-441. Work in Progress Constructing Religion, Defining Crime (Book manuscript). Christianity & Slavery (Edited volume). HONORS McKnight Land Grant Professorship, University of Minnesota, 2018-2020 Young Scholars in American Religion, IUPUI, 2018-2019 James Cameron Faculty Fellow, University of St. Andrews, 2018 Grant-in-Aid, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, 2014-6 Single Semester Leave, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, 2015 Resident Fellow, Institute for Advanced Study, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, 2014 Graduate Society Dissertation Completion Fellowship, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 2012-3 Library Resident Fellowship, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, PA, 2012 Center for New World Comparative Studies Fellow, John Carter Brown Library, Providence, 2011 Term-time Fellowship, Charles Warren Center, Cambridge, MA, 2011 Merit/Term-time Research Grant, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 2011 Research Fellowship, Deutsche Akademischer Austausch Dienst, 2010 Short Term Research Fellowship, The Library Company of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, 2010 Gest Fellowship, Haverford College, Philadelphia, PA, 2010 Kennedy Traveling Fellowship, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 2010 Certificate of Distinction for Excellence in Teaching, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 2009 IIE Fulbright Grant, Germany, 2006 INVITED LECTURES & PRESENTATIONS
Gerbner C.V. 3 Caribbean Reformations: Black Christians, Protestant Missionaries, and the Limits of Freedom in the Atlantic World, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, NJ, October 31, 2017. Christian Slavery: Protestant Missions and Slave Conversion in the Atlantic World, at the WMQ- EMSI Workshop, Religion in the Early Americas, Pasadena, CA, May 12-14, 2016. Inner Slavery and Spiritual Freedom: German Pietism and the Critique of Black Christianity on St. Thomas, 1730-1735, Columbia University, March 10, 2014. Writing Against Slavery: Germantown, Quakers, and the Beginnings of the Anti-Slavery Movement, Equally Entitled to Freedom: Benezet Now, Benezet Then, Germantown Historical Society, Philadelphia, PA, November 1-2 2013. Christian Slavery: A Protestant Dilemma, Leibniz Universität, Hannover, Germany, July 2010. The Germantown Quaker Protest of 1688 and the Origins of American Abolitionism. Keynote speaker, Pat Henning Memorial Lecture, Germantown Historical Society, Philadelphia, PA, November 2007. CONFERENCES Conferences Organized Missionary Encounters in the Early Modern World, held at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN from May 27-29, 2015. Co-organized with Karin Vélez (Macalester College). Participation was competitive and we fully funded twelve scholars from around the country. Conference Presentations Missionaries and Maroons: The Religious Politics of Freedom in 18 th century Jamaica, at the Religion & Politics in Early America Conference, Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, March 1-4, 2018 (Upcoming). Re-centering Obeah: Moravian Missionary and Afro-Caribbean Epistemologies, at the Forum for European Expansion and Global Interaction (FEEGI) Bi-annual Conference, Honolulu, Hawaii, February 2018 (Upcoming). Religion, Kinship and Knowledge in the Eighteenth Century Caribbean, at the German Studies Association Conference, Atlanta, Georgia, October 5-7, 2017. My paper was selected and funded by the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C. Commenter for Recent Developments in Mission Studies and the Writing of Early American History, Omohundro Institute for Early American History and Culture, June 16-18, 2017. Commenter for Disciplinary Cartographies: Interrogating the Imperatives of World History and Area Studies, at the International African Studies Conference, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, April 21-3, 2016.
Gerbner C.V. 4 Religion on Mesopotamia Plantation, Roundtable on Richard Dunn s Two Plantations, McNeil Center for Early American Studies, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, May 8, 2015 and the Association of Caribbean Historians Conference, Nassau, Bahamas, May 19, 2015. They Call Me Obea : German Moravians, Afro-Caribbeans, and Obeah in Jamaica, 1754-1762, FEEGI Bi-Annual Conference, February 21-22, 2014 The Souls of Slave Drivers: Defining Conversion in Jamaica, 1754-1765, Organization of American Historians Annual Conference, San Francisco, CA, April 2013. Literacy, Marriage and Death in the Moravian Missions of St. Thomas and Jamaica, 1736-1760, Association of Caribbean Historians Annual Conference, Curaçao, May 2012. The Founding of the Moravian Slave Missions, 1731-1735, American Society of Church History Annual Conference, Chicago, IL, January 2012. Christian Slavery: A Protestant Dilemma, 1660-1760, John Carter Brown Library Seminar Series, Providence, RI. August 2011. From Literacy to the Crucifixion: Moravian Missionary Strategy in St. Thomas and Jamaica, 1732-1770, at the Summer Academy for Atlantic History, Galway, Ireland, May 2011. Editing the Archive: The Moravian Mission to Jamaica, 1754-1770, Quellen Workshop, Leibniz Universität, Hannover, Germany, April 2011. The Politics of Conversion: The International Moravian Baptismal Controversy in the 1750s, at the American Historical Association Annual Conference, Boston, MA, January 2011. Antislavery in Print: George Keith, the Christian Quakers and the Exhortation and Caution to Friends Concerning the Buying or Keeping of Negroes, Quakers and Slavery Conference, Philadelphia, PA, November 2010. They Call Me Obea : The Rise, Fall and Resurrection of the Moravian Mission on Jamaica, 1754-1770, Moravian History and Music Conference, Bethlehem, PA, October 2010. Recipient of the Best Paper for a Graduate Student Prize Quaker Slavery and Slave Rebellion in Colonial Barbados, Biennial Conference of the Society for Early Americanists, Hamilton, Bermuda, March 2009. TEACHING University of Minnesota HIST 1301: Authority and Rebellion: American History to 1865 HIST 3285: Magic and Medicine HIST 3414/RELS 3070: Religion and Empire HSEM 3038: History of Slavery through Literature and Film HIST 8015: Scope and Methods of Historical Studies
Gerbner C.V. 5 HIST 8960: Food, Magic, Medicine: History of the Atlantic World, 1500-1800 Harvard University, Studies of Women, Gender and Sexuality Course Instructor. Gender, Sexuality and the Impossible Narrative of Slavery, Spring 2012 Harvard University, Committee on the Study of Religion Head Teaching Fellow. Religion and American Society Spring 2010 Harvard University, History Department Teaching Fellow. Early American Slave Revolts, Fall 2009 Teaching Fellow. Social Thought in Modern America, Spring 2010 ACADEMIC SERVICE Co-Founder and Organizer, Early Modern Atlantic Workshop, University of Minnesota, 2014- Advisory Board, Center for Early Modern History, University of Minnesota, 2015-6, 2017- Advisory, History Department, University of Minnesota, 2014-2015, 2017- Editorial Collective, Gender & History, 2014- Merit Subcommittee, History Department, University of Minnesota, 2015-2016 Job Placement Officer, University of Minnesota, 2013-4 Editorial Reviewer, Harvard Theological Review, 2009-11 Coordinator, North American Religions Colloquium, Harvard University, 2009-10 Coordinator, American Studies Workshop, Harvard University, 2009-10 LANGUAGES German (fluent) German Sütterlin Script (reading) Dutch (reading) Dutch Creole (reading) Spanish (reading) PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS American Historical Association, American Academy of Religion, American Society of Church Historians, Association of Caribbean Historians, FEEGI