The 2022 fellowship class comprises artists and scholars from throughout the United States and Canada and includes those whose expertise varies from the natural sciences to social sciences, humanities to creative arts. Sinha is one of five to receive awards for research in U.S. history and was among nearly 2,500 fellowship applicants.

2022 Guggenheim Fellow

The Pennington Award is bestowed by the Heidelberg Center for American Studies and the Faculty of Theology. It commemorates the American pastor and former slave James W.C. Pennington, who. received an honorary doctorate from the Ruperto Carola in 1849, making him the first African American to receive this academic honor from a European university.

2021 Universität Heidelberg  James W.C. Pennington Award

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A groundbreaking history of abolition that recovers the largely forgotten role of African Americans in the long march toward emancipation from the American Revolution through the Civil War Received historical wisdom casts abolitionists as bourgeois, mostly white reformers burdened by racial paternalism and economic conservatism. Manisha Sinha overturns this image, broadening her scope beyond the antebellum period usually associated with abolitionism and recasting it as a radical social movement in which men and women, black and white, free and enslaved found common ground in causes ranging from feminism and utopian socialism to anti-imperialism and efforts to defend the rights of labor. Drawing on extensive archival research, including newly discovered letters and pamphlets, Sinha documents the influence of the Haitian Revolution and the centrality of slave resistance in shaping the ideology and tactics of abolition. This book is a comprehensive new history of the abolition movement in a transnational context. It illustrates how the abolitionist vision ultimately linked the slave’s cause to the struggle to redefine American democracy and human rights across the globe.

The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition

The University of Connecticut (UConn) is one of America’s top 20 public universities, according to U.S. News & World Report. It is home to more than 31,000 students, 1,300 faculty, 230,000 proud alumni, and a handsome husky named Jonathan.

The University has fourteen schools and colleges: Agriculture and Natural Resources, Business, Dental Medicine, Education, Engineering, Fine Arts, Law, Liberal Arts and Sciences, Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, and Social Work. Students can choose from eight undergraduate bachelor's degrees with 102 possible majors, as well as seventeen graduate/doctoral degrees and five professional degree programs (MD, JD, etc.).

UConn's main campus in Storrs is admitting the highest-achieving freshmen in University history. Student diversity continues to increase, as does the number of honors students, valedictorians and salutatorians who consistently make UConn their top choice. It's a great time to be a Husky!

University of Connecticut

Manisha Sinha is professor and the James L. and Shirley A. Draper Chair in American History. She was born in India and received her Ph.D from Columbia University where her dissertation was nominated for the Bancroft prize. She was awarded the Chancellor’s Medal, the highest honor bestowed on faculty and received the Distinguished Graduate Mentor Award in Recognition of Outstanding Graduate Teaching and Advising from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where she taught for over twenty years. Her recent book The Slave’s Cause was reviewed by The Times Literary Supplement, The New York Review of Books, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, The Atlantic, and The Boston Globe, among other newspapers and journals. It was featured as the Editor’s Choice of the New York Times Book Review. It was named the book of the week by Times Higher Education in May, 2016 to coincide with its UK publication and one of three Great History Books for 2016 in Bloomberg News. Her first book, The Counterrevolution of Slavery, was named one of the ten best books on slavery in Politico in 2015. In 2017, she was named one of Top Twenty Five Women in Higher Education by the magazine Diverse: Issues in Higher Education.

Sinha’s research interests lie in United States history, especially the transnational histories of slavery and abolition and the history of the Civil War and Reconstruction. She is a member of the Council of Advisors of the Lapidus Center for the Historical Analysis of Transatlantic Slavery at the Schomburg, New York Public Library, co-editor of the “Race and the Atlantic World, 1700-1900,” series of the University of Georgia Press, and is on the editorial board of the Journal of the Civil War Era. She has written for The New York Times, The New York Daily News, Time Magazine, CNN, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, and The Huffington Post and been interviewed by The Times of London, The Boston Globe, and Slate. She appeared on Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show in 2014. She was an adviser and on-screen expert for the Emmy nominated PBS documentary, The Abolitionists (2013), which is a part of the NEH funded Created Equal film series. Professor Sinha is on leave for the 2016-2017 academic year working on her new book on abolition and the making of Radical Reconstruction.

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uconn-expert-weighs-in-on-controversial-statue-debate-at-the-connecticut-capitol

Draper Chair in American History

What should be the fate of the large statue commemorating John Mason that adorns the Connecticut State Capitol Building? He’s a historic figure and founder of the Connecticut Colony.  He also left a legacy of violence and murder, with more than 400 Indigenous people, including 175 women and children, killed under his command.

And whether to let his statue stand or remove it has engaged a debate from leading experts, historians, relatives of Mason, and the Indigenous community across the state.

UConn’s Manisha Sinha was asked to lend her expertise to the situation:

Manisha Sinha, a University of Connecticut professor of 19th century U.S. history, said she is a veteran of debates about the fate of statues memorializing Confederate leaders as well as founding fathers who owned slaves. “I have advocated for the taking down of statues that commemorate Confederate leaders and generals, who I see as traitors to the American republic, fighting for the worst cause in American history, as General Grant put it, in the cause of human bondage,” Sinha said. “On the other hand, I have opposed the taking down of statues of some of our founding fathers, revolutionary figures who did not defend slavery as a positive good.” Sinha said history can be complex, and great men of history can be flawed. “The Mason massacre is not a complex story,” she said. “It was a sheer massacre of non-combatants and of women, children and elders. We cannot excuse this by pointing to internecine warfare among Native Americans.” Mason’s statue is not necessary to teach history, she said.  “I think it is high time that you think of removing John Mason’s statue,” Sinha said. “It cannot be contextualized. We do not remember history by statues, especially not in the monumental 19th century forms. We actually end up commemorating people, making them heroic.”  November 18 – The CT Mirror   This is a sensitive and very important topic as America reconciles with its past and moves forward as a country.  And, if you are a journalist covering this topic, then let our experts help with your in-depth coverage and questions.

Manisha Sinha is the Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut and the author of "The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition." She is an expert in the era of America during the 19th Century and available to speak with media regarding this topic – simply click on her icon now to arrange an interview today.



UConn expert weighs in on controversial statue debate at the Connecticut Capitol


is-this-the-biggest-election-since-1860-let-our-expert-explain-why

 The upcoming U.S. presidential election is happening in unprecedented times and during what could be the most divisive era in more than a century and a half.

This week, one of the University of Connecticut’s historical experts, Manisha Sinha, was featured by CNN to explain her point that America is indeed facing its biggest election in 160 years.

“The 2020 presidential election is certainly as consequential as that of 1860. It is, as Biden is fond of saying, a battle for the 'soul of America.' The fate of the American republic once again hangs in the balance. Like the slaveholders of the 1850s, Trump, his followers and enablers are in a position to pose an existential threat to American democracy. Like many slaveholders, Trump refuses to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses.  "If history appears first as tragedy, then as farce, the counterparts of southern secessionists and proslavery theorists today are QAnon conspiracy theorists, neo Confederates, and the right-wing Boogaloo boys. Much of the contemporary Republican Party that refuses to repudiate Trump is like those southern Whites who may not have had a direct stake in slavery but went with their states, who ultimately chose slavery before the republic. The choice -- as the Republicans of the Lincoln Project, who have broken with their party, put it -- is between America and Trump.”   Dr. Sinha’s full op-ed is available on CNN.com and is a must-read for anyone looking to put this year’s election into historical context.

And, if you are a journalist looking to cover this topic, let our experts help with your coverage.

Manisha Sinha is the Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut and the author of "The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition." She is available to speak with media regarding this topic – simply click on her icon now to arrange an interview today.

 

Is this the biggest election since 1860? Let our expert explain why

Welcome to Suffrage School! We invite learners of all ages to explore the long, complex, and ongoing efforts to ensure full citizenship for women in the United States. 

Suffrage School draws on the resources of the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. Each lesson connects in rich and unpredictable ways to the Library’s Long 19th Amendment Project, which tackles the tangled history of gender and American citizenship. Our instructor today is Manisha Sinha, the James L. and Shirley A. Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut and the 2019–2020 Mellon-Schlesinger Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard.

Suffrage School opens on June 1, 2020, and will release new videos at regular intervals for the remainder of the centennial year. All lessons will be available at http://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/suffrageschool. 

#SuffrageSchool #Suffrage #Citizenship #Women #Gender

Manisha Sinha | Schlesinger Library - Suffrage School || Radcliffe Institute

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