College of Liberal Arts & Sciences
Rachael Pasierowska
Visiting Assistant Professor
Slavery and Labor
19th-Century Atlantic world
Office:
161 SH
Office Hours:
Monday 10:30 am - 12 pm, Wednesday 2 - 3 pm, Friday 10:30 am - 12 pm; or by appointment. In person or Zoom
Phone Number:
319-467-0926
Dr. Rachael L. Pasierowska completed a dual PhD at Rice University, Texas, and the Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brazil, in History specialising in animal and slavery studies. Her research focusses on the interactions between enslaved Africans in the 19th-century Atlantic world (Brazil, Cuba, and the U.S. South) and animals. She is especially interested in comparative studies of slavery across the Atlantic World and enslaved Africans’ identities and thought processes. Her research also encompasses environmental history, medical history, and the cosmological worlds of enslaved Africans. She earned a MS from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, in Slavery and Forced Labour.
Rachael has been awarded fellowships from all over the U.S., including the American Antiquarian Society, the American Philosophical Society, The Huntington, and The Smithsonian. She has presented at tertiary institutions from across three continents in both English and Portuguese. She is the author of several articles and is working on her first book project that explores animals and slavery in a comparative Atlantic context.
Teaching
Classes taught include
HIST:1040 – Diversity in History: Folklore in the African American Atlantic World
HIST:1040 – Diversity in History: Middle Passages: The Forced Journeys of Enslaved Africans,1500-1865
HIST:2267 – African American History to 1877
HIST:3171 – Slavery in World History
HIST:3275 – History of Slavery in the U.S.A.
Independent Reading: Maritime History and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
Awards & Service
Fellowships include
2019 The Huntington Library Short-Term Research Fellowship Program (Unfulfilled due to Covid-19)
2019 African American Religious Studies Forum Fellowship Program, Center for Engaged Research and Collaborative Learning
2019 Fondren Library Research Fellow working on the Red Book of Houston, 1915
2018-2019 Smithsonian Libraries Baird Society Resident Scholar Program
2018-2019 Friends of the Princeton University Library Research Grant Program
2018-2019 Library Resident Research Fellow at the American Philosophical Society
2016-2017 Goizueta Foundation Graduate Fellowship, awarded for research in the Cuban Heritage Collections, University of Miami
2017 James T. Wagoner ’29 Foreign Study Scholarship, awarded for research in Cuba (March 2017- May 2017), Rice University (Unfulfilled due to Covid-19)
2014 Research Fellowship for Travel to Brazil, Rice University
2013 Ora N. Arnold Endowment for Travel to Brazil
2013 Kathryn Davis Fellowship for Peace: Investing in the Study of Critical Languages, Middlebury College
2009 PGCE Bursary, French and German 11-18, Canterbury Christ Church University
Awards include
- Champion Teacher of Student Success, The University of Iowa, November 2022
- Captain Charles Septimus Longcope Award in History for the Best Completed Ph.D. Dissertation, Rice University, April 2021
- Best Paper Prize for the Reflecting Black Fall Research Symposium, Commemorating 400 Hundred Years of African American History, University of Houston-Downtown, October 2019
- Mary Hayes Ewing Prize for Best Article in Southern History, Rice University, April 2017 and, April 2015
- Best Paper Prize for the 2013 Graduate History Conference, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, May 2013
- Ian Thompson Award for Creativity and Innovation in the Classroom, Canterbury Christ Church University, February 2011