Participant Info
- First Name
- Katharine
- Last Name
- Gerbner
- Country
- United States
- State
- MN Minnesota
- kgerbner@umn.edu
- Affiliation
- University of Minnesota
- Website URL
- www.katharinegerbner.com
- Keywords
- History, Religion, Slavery, Christianity, Atlantic World, Early America, Caribbean, African Diaspora, Conversion
- Availability
- Media Contact
- Additional Contact Information
- PhD
- PhD
Personal Info
- Photo
- About Me
I am a historian of religion, race, and slavery. I work as an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Minnesota, where I teach courses on Atlantic History, History of Religions, Magic & Medicine, and The Early Modern Archive.
My research explores the religious dimensions of race, authority, and freedom in early America, the Caribbean, and the Atlantic world. My first book, Christian Slavery: Conversion and Race in the Protestant Atlantic World, shows how debates between slave-owners, black Christians, and missionaries transformed the practice of Protestantism and the language of race.
I’m currently working on a few different projects. “Constructing Religion, Defining Crime,” examines how some non-European religions – particularly those that were practiced under slavery – have been excluded from the category of religion and criminalized over the past three centuries.
I’ve also been working on an article about Missionaries and Maroons, which takes a micro-historical look at how and why maroon leaders sought to create alliances with Christian missionaries. Another project, called “Caribbean Reformations,” asks what happens to our understanding of the Protestant Reformation when we include the Caribbean, and the enslaved and free blacks who converted to Protestantism, into our understanding of the long Reformation.
- Recent Publications
-
Missionary Encounters in the Atlantic World: Gerbner, Katharine, Karin Vélez, Journal of Early Modern History, 21 , 2017.
Theorizing Conversion: Christianity, Colonization, and Consciousness in the Early Modern Atlantic World. Gerbner, Katharine, Author, 2015. Download
“‘They Call Me Obea’: German Moravian Missionaries and Afro-Caribbean Religion in Jamaica, 1754-1760: Gerbner, Katharine, Atlantic Studies , 12 160-178, 2015. Download
Beyond the ‘Halfway Covenant’: Church Membership, Extended Baptism, and Outreach in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1656-1667: Gerbner, Katharine, The New England Quarterly, 85 281-301, 2012.
Antislavery in Print: The Germantown Protest, the ‘Exhortation,’ and the Seventeenth-Century Quaker Debate on Slavery,: Gerbner, Katharine, Early American Studies, 9 552-575, 2011. Download
The Ultimate Sin: Christianising Slaves on Seventeenth Century Barbados: Gerbner, Katharine, Slavery & Abolition, 31 57-73, 2010. Download
- Media Coverage
- Social Media
- @ktgerbs
- Country Focus
- Expertise by Geography
- Atlantic, Caribbean, United States
- Expertise by Chronology
- 17th century, 18th century, 19th century, Early Modern
- Expertise by Topic
- Colonialism, Race, Rebellion & Revolution, Religion
