Assistant Professor
AY 2020-2021: ON LEAVE
Ph.D. – University of California, Berkeley, 2014
M. A. – University of California, Berkeley, 2010
B.A. – Yale University, 2005
Professor Hannah Farber specializes in the political economy of colonial North America, the early American republic, and the Atlantic World. Her manuscript, Underwriters of the United States, is under contract with the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture. 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.
Additional research interests include early modern globalization and the visual and material culture of ocean commerce. Early-stage projects include a cultural history of interest rates and a study of commercial property marks as phenomena with visual, material, and legal aspects.
Hannah Farber is on leave for 2020-2021 as a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow at the New-York Historical Society.
She is a frequent co-organizer of the Columbia University Seminar on Early American History and Culture.
Forthcoming Fall 2021: Underwriters of the United States, Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture/UNC Press
"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
"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). Recipient of EAS's John M. Murrin Prize for best article published 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.