Department of History

Jacob Pomerantz

  • Graduate

I came to Pittsburgh after completing my B.A. in History at Wheaton College, Massachusetts. My undergraduate thesis explored the transatlantic connections of the Winthrop family in the seventeenth century. In between my undergraduate and graduate studies, I taught at an outdoor education program in New Hampshire, and I still nurture a passion of all things green.

My MA thesis, completed in April 2015, examined, through law codes and colonial records, the important role port towns played in the development of Barbados’s slave society in the 17th century.

Fields

Atlantic History
Caribbean History
History of Slavery

Teaching Experience

Grader: Viking Age Scandinavia, Fall 2014

Teaching Assistant: Western Civilization I, Spring 2015

Teaching Assistant: Origins of American Capitalism, Fall 2015

Research Interests

PhD Research Topic:

For most of the 17th century, Barbados was England’s most productive colony in the Caribbean, a major site of sugar production, and an important market in the transatlantic slave trade. At the center of this emergent plantation complex was the port, Bridgetown, whose inhabitants were crucial in organizing the island’s trade and facilitating the transportation of commodities. My research intends to study these often-transient inhabitants, as they linked Barbados to regional and transatlantic systems of commerce both within and outside of imperial boundaries.

Advisor: Molly Warsh