Department of History

Marcus Rediker

  • Distinguished Professor

Watch Dr. Rediker discuss using filmmaking to bring history alive.

Fields

Early American History
Atlantic History

Teaching

U.S. History Survey to 1865
Global History of Piracy
Colonial America
American Revolution
Reading Marx and Engels
Readings in Early American History
Theory and Method in Social/Cultural History
Atlantic History, 1500–1800
Africa and the Atlantic
America/Atlantic/World
How to Write History from Below

Education & Training

  • PhD, University of Pennsylvania, 1982

Representative Publications

The Return of Benjamin Lay, with Naomi Wallace (Faber and Faber, 2023)

Under the Banner of King Death: Pirates of the Atlantic, A Graphic Novel, with David Lester and Paul Buhle (Beacon Press, 2023)

Prophet against Empire: Benjamin Lay, a Graphic Novel, with David Lester and Paul Buhle (Beacon Press, 2021)

The Fearless Benjamin Lay: The Quaker Dwarf who became the First Revolutionary Abolitionist (Beacon Press 2017)

Outlaws of the Atlantic: Sailors, Pirates, and Motley Crews in the Age of Sail (Beacon Press/Verso, 2014)

The Amistad Rebellion: An Atlantic Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom (Viking-Penguin 2012) 

The Slave Ship A Human History (Viking-Penguin 2007)

Many Middle Passages: Forced Migration and the Making of the Modern World, ed. with Emma Christopher and Cassandra Pybus (University of California Press 2007) 

Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age (Beacon Press/Verso 2004)

The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (Beacon Press/Verso 2000), coauthor: Peter Linebaugh

Who Built America? Working People and the Nation’s Economy, Politics, Culture, and Society, Volume 1 (Pantheon Books 1989)

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates, and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700–1750 (Cambridge University Press 1987)

Research Interests

"Escaping slavery by sea in 19c America"