Jonathan Lande

Ph.D., History, Brown University, May 2018

Specialization

Jonathan Lande is the author of the forthcoming Freedom Soldiers, a history of enlisted freedom seekers who fought for liberation in the camps, courts, and prisons of the US Army during the Civil War

He earned his PhD at Brown University (2018). Before joining Purdue, he was the Brown University-Tougaloo College Exchange Faculty Fellow (2017-2018) and the Schwartz Postdoctoral Fellow at New-York Historical Society and the New School (2018-2019).

Lande is the recipient of the Allan Nevins Dissertation Prize (Society of American Historians), the Cromwell Dissertation Prize (American Society for Legal History), the Du Bois-Wells Paper Prize (African American Intellectual History Society), and the William F. Holmes Paper Prize (Southern Historical Association). He also received the award for Excellence in Discovery and Creative Endeavors from the College of Liberal Arts at Purdue University (2024) and Brown University’s Presidential Award for Excellence in Teaching (2018), an award he was nominated for by students from Brown and Tougaloo.

Lande has published articles in the Journal of American History, Journal of Social History, Journal of African American History, Journal of American Ethnic History, Civil War History, and the Washington Post. He has been a research fellow at, among other institutions, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Huntington Library, Harvard University, and the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition of Yale University.

Lande has delivered papers on his research at meetings of organizations including the American Historical Association, Organization of American Historians, and the Southern Historical Association. C-SPAN aired his talk on formerly enslaved men who deserted the US Army. It can be viewed here.

Lande is accepting graduate students interested in delving into the Civil War era and African American history throughout the nineteenth century.  

List of Publications

Warriors, Rebels, and Runaways: A History of Black Soldiers’ Struggle for Freedom during the American Civil War (under contract with Oxford University Press)

“Emancipating Masculinity: Black Union Deserters and Their Families in the Civil War South,” Journal of American History 109, no. 3 (December 2022): 548-570.

“‘Prisoners with Undaunted Patriotism’: Incarcerated Black Soldiers and Battles of Citizenship in Military Prisons during the Civil War,” Civil War History 68, no. 3 (September 2022): 229-267.

“The Black Badge of Courage: The Politics of Recording Black Union Army Service and the Militarization of Black History in the Civil War’s Aftermath,” Journal of American Ethnic History 42, no. 1 (Fall 2022): 5-42.

 “‘Lighting Up the Path of Liberty and Justice’: Black Abolitionist Fourth of July Celebrations and the Promise of America from the Fugitive Slave Act to the Civil War,” Journal of African American History 105, no. 3 (Summer 2020): 364-95. 

 “Trials of Freedom: African American Deserters during the U.S. Civil War,” Journal of Social History 43, no. 3 (Spring 2016): 693-709.