SAH membership, made up of academic historians and professional publishers of American history, is by invitation only and is limited to 250 historians and 16 publishers. Selection for membership is based on a demonstrated commitment to literary distinction in the writing and publishing of history and biography.
Kolchin received his doctorate from Johns Hopkins University in 1970. He specializes in 19th-century U.S. history, the South, slavery and emancipation and comparative history.
His books include First Freedom: The Responses of Alabama's Blacks to Emancipation and Reconstruction, Unfree Labor: American Slavery and Russian Serfdom (1987), American Slavery, 1619-1877 and A Sphinx on the American Land: The Nineteenth-Century South in Comparative Perspective.
Kolchin is the winner of the Bancroft Prize in American History, the Organization of American Historians' Avery Craven Award, the Southern Historical Association's Charles Sydnor Award and UD's highest faculty honor, the Francis Alison Award. He is currently working on a comparative study of emancipation and its aftermath in Russia and the U.S. South.
Photo by Kathy Atkinson
