Background

Justin is a Ph.D. candidate (ABD) in nineteenth-century United States history. He earned his B.A. from Boston College in 2003, and his M.A. from the College of William and Mary in 2005. He is now  working on his dissertation that examines the relationships between white and black residents in nineteenth-century maritime New England, and their participation in (or opposition to) the abolition of slavery. Justin has also worked for several years in the field of public history, spending time with the Nantucket Historical Association, the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, and the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. His background piece covering the 1781 siege of Yorktown appeared in Colonial Williamsburg's October 2006 teacher guide for the Electronic Fieldtrip celebrating the 225th anniversary of the British surrender at Yorktown. Justin has also published an entry in the Encyclopedia of African American History, an article entitled "Seizing Agency: Black Nantucket and the Abolitionist Press, 1832-1848" in the fall 2003 issue of Historic Nantucket, and presented a paper on Nantucket's African-American community at the 2004 Atlantic World conference at UNC-Greensboro. Justin was an Andrew W. Mellon fellow in Humanistic Studies in 2003-2004

Publications

“Nantucket,” in The Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619-1895: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass, ed. by Paul Finkleman et al., 3 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
“Seizing Agency: Black Nantucket and the Abolitionist Press, 1832 – 1848,” Historic Nantucket, vol. 52, no. 4 (fall 2003): 11-16.
“Yorktown: Historical Background,” in the Yorktown Electronic Fieldtrip Teacher’s Guide (Williamsburg, Va.: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation), expected October 2006.