Thomas C. Holt

Currently the James Westfall Thompson Distinguished Service Professor of American and African American History at the University of Chicago, Tom Holt has a longstanding professional interest in comparing the experiences of people in the African diaspora, particularly those in the Caribbean and the United States. Elected president of the American Historical Association for 1994-95, Holt has been a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellow since 1990 and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2003. Last year Holt was a recipient the Wilbur Cross Medal, awarded by Yale University in recognition of distinguished alumni. His most significant publications are a study of Jamaica's economy, politics, and society after slavery, The Problem of Freedom: Race, Labor, and Politics in Jamaica and Britain, 1832-1938, which was published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 1992 and awarded the Elsa Goveia Prize by the Association of Caribbean Historians in 1995. Holt’s most recent publication is Race, the 24^th volume of the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture (2013), which he edited with Laurie Green for the University of North Carolina Press. In that collection of essays, they explore the multi-racial—as opposed to the more conventional bi-racial—history and present of the American South. Prof. Holt is currently working on a study of the Civil Rights Movement for Oxford University Press and on a study of the problem of race in the Atlantic World with Leora Auslander.

*Since the NEH was founded, the agency has awarded more than $171 million to nearly three thousand projects on African American history and culture. Holt has been a recipient of NEH funding.

AFFILIATION: University of Chicago