Northern Illinois University
Department of History
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Current Research

A distinguished research professor, Aaron Fogleman teaches undergraduate courses and graduate seminars in early American history and the history of the Atlantic World, as well as methodology courses and independent studies by undergraduate and graduate students.

He is the author of Hopeful Journeys: German Immigration, Settlement, and Political Culture in Colonial America, 1717-1775 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), Jesus Is Female: Moravians and Radical Religion in Early America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), and Two Troubled Souls: An Eighteenth-Century Couple's Spiritual Journey in the Atlantic World (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013), which won the 2014 Rawley Prize from the American Historical Association for the best book in Atlantic History.

He has published articles in the Journal of American History, William and Mary Quarterly, Atlantic Studies, Historische Anthropologie, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Oxford Bibliographies in Atlantic History, Pietismus und Neuzeit, Georgia Historical Quarterly and other journals, as well as in a number of essay collections.

Professor Fogleman has lectured in Europe and numerous places in North America. He was a Guggenheim Fellow in 2018-19 and held the fulbright distinguished chair in American studies at the Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany in 2008-09. He was an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for History in Göttingen, Germany in 1996-97 and 1999, and from 1991 to 2002 he taught at the University of South Alabama in Mobile.

He has had the pleasure and honor to direct numerous dissertations, and his former students teach and conduct research at, among other institutions, the University of Iowa, William and Mary, Columbia College in Chicago, South Carolina State University, and the U.S. Air Force. His former students have published their revised dissertations at Cornell University Press and Routledge, as well as articles with Atlantic Studies, Early American Studies, the Florida Historical Quarterly, Ethnohistory and other journals. Many of his MA students have received funding in major Ph.D. programs.

Professor Fogleman regularly reviews books, manuscripts, and grant proposals for international journals, presses and grant agencies.

In addition to articles, his current research is focused on two book projects. One is a monograph entitled "Immigrant Voices: European and African Stories of Freedom, Unfreedom, and Identity through Four Centuries of Transatlantic Migrations to the Americas," which was funded by a Guggenheim Foundation research fellowship, and the other is "Five Hundred African Voices: A Catalog of Published Accounts by Africans Enslaved in the Transatlantic Slave Trade, 1586-1936," which is a collection of five hundred published accounts in numerous languages by Africans who survived the Middle Passage. Each entry contains a short biography, a URL to the full text and a complete edition history of the text. After publication in cloth, a free digitized, online version is planned.

Major Publications

Books

• with Robert Hanserd, Five Hundred African Voices: A Catalog of Published Accounts by Africans Enslaved in the Transatlantic Slave Trade, 1586-1936. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, forthcoming.
• Two Troubled Souls: An Eighteenth-Century Couple's Spiritual Journey in the Atlantic World. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013.
• Jesus Is Female: Moravians and the Challenge of Radical Religion in Early America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007.
• Hopeful Journeys: German Immigration, Settlement, and Political Culture in Colonial America, 1717-1775. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996.

Select Articles/Book Chapters

• “Ideologies of the Age of Revolution and Emancipation in Enslaved African Narratives,” in Sophie White and Trevor Burnard (eds.), Hearing Enslaved Voices: African and Indian Slave Testimony in British and French America, 1700-1848 (New York: Routledge, 2020), 145-164.
• “The United States and the Transformation of Transatlantic Migration during the Age of Revolution and Emancipation,” in Michael Zuckerman and Patrick Spero, eds., The American Revolution Reborn. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016, 251-269 and 387-390.
• "The Transformation of the Atlantic World, 1776-1867," Atlantic Studies, 6:1, April 2009, 5-28.
• "Jesus Is Female: The Moravian Challenge in the German Communities of British North America," The William and Mary Quarterly, 60 (April 2003): 295-332.
• "From Slaves, Convicts, and Servants to Free Passengers: The Transformation of Immigration in the Era of the American Revolution," The Journal of American History, 85 (1998): 43-76.

Teaching Interests

I teach courses in two areas. The first is early America, which includes the study of Europeans, Africans, and Native Americans primarily in eastern North America from early colonization until the early 19th century. Of special interest here is identifying the kind of colonial society that developed up to the mid-18th century and then the nature of change that occurred thereafter as a result of the American Revolution. The second area is the Atlantic World, 1492-1867, which addresses the rise, nature, and transformation of the world made by contacts among Europeans, Africans, and Native Americans on the four continents and the Atlantic Ocean during this period.

Courses Taught

• HIST 260 American History to 1865
• HIST 261 American History since 1865
• HIST 395 Historical Methods
• HIST 459/559 The Atlantic World, 1492-1867
• HIST 460/560 Colonial America
• HIST 461/561 The American Revolution
• HIST 495 Senior Thesis
• HIST 690 Reading Seminar in the History of the Atlantic World, 1492-1867
• HIST 790 Research Seminar in the History of the Atlantic World, 1492-1867

Interdisciplinary Affiliations

Affiliate, Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality