Alumni Interview with Scott Spillman (Stanford History PhD, 2017)

Scott Spillman (Stanford PhD 2017) is an American historian and the author of Making Sense of Slavery: America’s Long Reckoning, from the Founding Era to Today (Basic Books, 2025). His essays and reviews have appeared in The Point, Liberties, The New Yorker, The New Republic, n+1, the Chronicle Review, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, and he has published academic articles in Reviews in American History, History of Education Quarterly, and North Carolina Historical Review.

How did you become interested in the topic of slavery and U.S. intellectual history?

I first became interested in intellectual history and the history of higher education as an undergraduate at the University of North Carolina, and that’s what led me to Stanford’s U.S. History program. Then, in a section of History 351 Core in American History taught by Professor Caroline Winterer, I read two great histories of slavery, David Brion Davis’s The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution and Annette Gordon-Reed’s The Hemingses of Monticello. Meanwhile, the department had hired Professor James Campbell, who had recently published a book about African American journeys to Africa and was also fresh off having chaired the Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice. I took some courses with Jim and sat in on his lecture course on Slavery and Freedom in US History, and I found the ideas that he was talking about really interesting. So then when it came time for the dissertation, I suspect that Caroline saw all these things going on in my head and suggested slavery as a potential topic. As usual, she was right.

Tell us about your book,  Making Sense of Slavery: America’s Long Reckoning, from the Founding Era to Today. 

The book is an intellectual history of the study of slavery in the United States from roughly the Revolution to today. It began as my dissertation at Stanford, though at that point I was looking at a shorter stretch of time, beginning around 1830 and going up to . . . well, I don’t know how far I intended to go, but I cut off the dissertation around 1930 and made up some excuse for why that made sense. 

When I finished the dissertation, I had a good conversation about it with James Campbell, who then passed it along to one of his friends, Professor James Oakes, who’s an important scholar of slavery and a very perceptive critic. Oakes read my dissertation within a few days and sent me five single-spaced pages of comments, the most important of which, for me, was that he actually liked my work. He also pointed out that I was starting in the middle of the story and needed to go back at least to the Revolution to see the full history of Americans wrestling with slavery.

So I knew I had more work to do, but I didn’t get around to it for a while because my wife and I had twins soon after I finished the dissertation and I spent most of the next three years at home with them. By the time we put them in preschool, in the fall of 2020, and I started to have more time, the debate over the 1619 Project had recently occurred, as had the protests and period of “reckoning” that followed George Floyd’s death. I read back through my dissertation and realized that one crucial bit of context that had been missing from those public debates, and that I could contribute, was a detailed history of Americans’ long engagement with the subject of slavery—in other words, I could show that Americans had been studying slavery and wrestling with it in various ways from the very beginning of the United States. 

The book tells a long story that doesn’t necessarily lend itself to easy encapsulation, but I do try to illustrate a few big points along the way. One is that the study of slavery has been important in the development of ideas and institutions in American academic and intellectual life, especially in the social sciences, in the form of university research seminars, archival collections, interdisciplinary centers, and teaching workshops. Another is that the study of slavery shows us the many ways that we’ve fallen short of the ideal of objective scholarship (owing to bias, discrimination, political influence, and so on) as well as the ways that scholarship has been deployed for political ends. But then a final point is that the study of slavery also shows the critical importance of scholarly work, and particularly the importance of universities as laboratories for the creation of knowledge and spaces where it’s possible to hold productive debates about contentious topics.

You publish regularly in non-academic venues. What are some challenges of publishing in such venues? 

I’ve wanted to write for magazines like The New Yorker and Harper’s and The Atlantic since I was in high school, so it feels much more natural for me to publish in non-academic venues than academic ones. I think the main challenge is that I’ve had to learn how to convince editors to let me write for them. This was much harder for me earlier in my career, and I collected plenty of rejections and non-responses, but it can still be difficult today, too. Beyond that, though, the process of publishing in non-academic venues is generally a joy, and I highly recommend it to anyone who is really interested in writing. Working with editors at non-academic publications has taught me a ton over the years about how to express myself clearly and concisely, how to tell a story that sustains some kind of narrative momentum, and how to show readers what’s at stake in some seemingly obscure book or idea.

You currently serve as chair of your city’s historic preservation commission. How does your academic training in History help you in this role? 

The day-to-day work of historic preservation involves a lot of design review and its essential nature is probably closer to urban planning or architecture or even construction than to academic history. My training in history particularly helps with the big-picture work of historic preservation, such as relating local developments to their state and national contexts, thinking about what elements of the city’s history are worth preserving (and why), and making the case for preserving the history that is embodied in the built environment.

Do you have a favorite archive or library?

Yes! Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina, which was the first place I ever did archival research as an undergraduate and so holds a special place in my heart for that reason alone. It helps that Wilson also looks the part, with its columns and dome, its high ceilings and wooden desks, and recently the experience has become even better because the manuscripts reading room is no longer an ugly attic space but has moved to a much grander and more suitable room on the main floor. One other thing I appreciate about Wilson is that it has been a major center for the study of slavery and the South for nearly a century, thanks to its stellar Southern Historical Collection, and doing my own research there has made me a small part of that history, too.

What texts inspired you the most in your career?

In the field of history, three books that I read during my first two years in graduate school at Stanford have had an outsized influence on me.

The first was Gordon Wood’s The Creation of the American Republic, which I read for my final essay in Professor Jack Rakove’s section of the Core in American History during my very first quarter of graduate school. I appreciated the importance that Wood places on the role of ideas in history (such as the idea of equality or the idea of America), and I was impressed by his ability to show the drama of history as it unfolded.

The second was David Brion Davis’s The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, which I read just before the start of my second year in preparation for a report I wrote for Caroline Winterer’s section of the Core. I was completely bowled over by the book’s depth and breadth, its nuanced analysis of the relationship between ideas and society, and its energetic wrestling with slavery as a philosophical and moral problem.

The last and probably most important book for me was Louis Menand’s The Metaphysical Club, which I read during spring break of my second year. I still remember reading the opening pages while sitting on the beach at Montauk on an unseasonably warm day; I was in New York visiting my wife, then in law school at NYU, and I was so struck by certain sentences that I believe I read at least a few passages aloud to her. To me, it is a beautiful and nearly perfect book.

What are some key things you remember from your time at Stanford?

The Core in American History was one of the key intellectual experiences of my life, and I am grateful to Stanford for giving students that opportunity. Outside of class, I enjoyed lots of good runs around campus and the Dish as well as plenty of shenanigans, revelry, and merrymaking in Escondido Village. I also have strangely fond memories of spending some late nights helping one of my good friends prepare for orals.

How would you advise graduate students who are now training in the  History field?

You are being paid to read and think and write. This is an extremely rare and precious opportunity, and in my experience there are few better ways to spend your time. Enjoy it!