Farber, Hannah

Office Hours

Spring 2026: Mondays & Wednesdays, 11:30 am - 12:30 pm

Education

Ph.D. – University of California, Berkeley, 2014
B.A. – Yale University

Research Interests

I research commerce, finance, and law in colonial North America, the early United States, and the Atlantic World.

My first book, Underwriters of the United States: How Insurance Shaped the American Founding, was published by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture in 2021. It explains how the transnational system of marine insurance, by governing the behavior of American merchants, influenced the establishment and early development of the American republic. You can download the book's prologue and introduction here.

My current book project is tentatively entitled The American Lawsuit: Civil Litigation from the Revolution to the Age of Jackson. The book focuses on typical lawsuits in American courts ranging from rural county courtrooms to High Courts of Chancery. The American Lawsuit explains why Americans sued each other so often and what they typically got out of the process of going to court. In the process, it reveals vast contests over material resources and the credibility of the American justice system, and sheds light on civil litigation's uneasy relationship with American democracy.

I am a series editor for American Beginnings, 1500-1900, at the University of Chicago Press.

I teach undergraduates and work with graduate students on a broad variety of topics in early North American and Atlantic history, both before and after the American Revolution.

I am a co-organizer of the Columbia University Seminar on Early American History and Culture.

Current CV

Publications

Book

Underwriters of the United States: How Insurance Shaped the American Founding, Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture/UNC Press, 2021

*John Lyman Book Award, US Maritime History, North American Society for Oceanic History, 2021

*Hagley Prize for Best Book in Business History, Business History Conference, 2023

Other Selected Publications

“Political Economies 1787–1800,” The Cambridge History of the American Revolution, eds. Marjoleine Kars, Michael A. McDonnell, and Andrew M. Schocket, Vol. 3: Reactions and Reverberations, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.

“Slave Trade Insurance in the Age of Abolition: Archives, Politics, and Legalities,” Slavery & Abolition 44 (2): 350–76.

“Early American Commercial Property Marks: Reading According to Code, and Beyond,” Early American Literature, Vol. 57, No. 1 (Feb. 2022): 43-84.

“Something From Nothing? Currency and Finance in the Critical Period,” in From Independence to the U.S. Constitution: Reconsidering the Critical Period of American History, eds. Douglas Bradburn and Christopher R. Pearl (University of Virginia Press, 2022), 193-215.

"Insurance For (and Against) the Empire," Commonplace: the Journal of Early American Life, April 2022,

"The Political Economy of Marine Insurance and the Making of the United States," The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 77, No. 4 (Oct. 2020): 581-612

“Practical Americans” (review essay), The William & Mary Quarterly, Vol. 78, No. 2 (Apr. 2021): 339-357.

"Caught Between Pedagogy and Politics: The Challenges of Teaching Globalization in the Twenty-First Century," The History Teacher, Vol. 53, No. 3 (May 2020): 441-469

"'Hamilton:' Who Tells Your Story?" Public Books, co-author Derek Miller, Feb. 13. 2019.

"Sailing on Paper: The Embellished Bill of Lading in the Material Atlantic, 1720-1864," Early American Studies, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Winter 2019).
*John M. Murrin Prize for best article published in EAS in 2019.

"Unrevolutionary Bastardy," review of The Low Road by Bruce Norris, The Junto: A Group Blog on Early American History, May 16, 2018.

"State-Building After War's End: A Government Financier Adjusts his Portfolio for Peace," Taking Stock of the State in Nineteenth-Century America, Journal of the Early Republic, Vol. 38, No. 1 (Spring 2018): 67-76.

"Millions for Credit: Peace with Algiers and the Establishment of America's Commercial Reputation Overseas, 1795-96," Journal of the Early Republic, Vol. 34, No. 2 (Summer 2014), 187-217.

"Nobody Panic: The Emerging Worlds of Economics and History in America," book review of Jessica Lepler, The Many Panics of 1837: People, Politics, and the Creation of a Transatlantic Financial Crisis (Cambridge, 2013), and Jonathan Levy, Freaks of Fortune: The Emerging World of Capitalism and Risk in America (Harvard, 2012), Enterprise and Society, Fall 2015.

"The Rise and Fall of the Province of Lygonia, 1643–1658," New England Quarterly 82 (September 2009), 490–513.

Awards

• 2026:
  - Cullman Center Fellowship, New York Public Library
  - Brown 2026 Senior Faculty Fellowship, Brown Institute for Advanced Study (declined)
  - ISERP Seed Grant, Columbia University
• 2025:
  - Distinguished Lecturer, Organization of American historians
  - Gilder Lehrman Scholarly Fellowship, Gilder Lehrman Institute
• 2022:
  - Colonial Society of Massachusetts, elected member
• 2020:
  - National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow at the New-York Historical Society 

Courses

• Contemporary Civilization I and II
• American History to 1865 (lecture)
• The Early American Republic: How the Rebels Became the Empire (lecture)
• Early American Autobiography as History: Testimony, Adventure, Confession (seminar)
• The Bible in Early America (seminar)
• Readings in Early American History (graduate)
• Early American Law and Society (seminar)