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Alice Baumgartner

Associate Professor of History
Alice Baumgartner
Pronouns She / Her / Hers Email albaumga@usc.edu

Research & Practice Areas

19th Century United States, U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, Slavery, Transnational History

Biography

Alice Baumgartner is an associate professor of history at the University of Southern California, where she teaches courses on 19th century North America. She received a Ph.D. in History from Yale University and an M.Phil in Latin American Studies from the University of Oxford. Her first book, South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to Civil War, published in 2020, was named a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award. Her research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and the Mellon Foundation, among others.

  • Research Specialties

    19th Century United States, U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, Slavery, Transnational History

  • Book

    • Baumgartner, A. L. (2020). South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War. New York: Basic Books.

    Book Chapters

    • Baumgartner, A. L. (2023). Fugitive Slaves, Free Soil, and the Contest over Sovereignty in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, 1821-67,. A Continent in Crisis: The US Civil War in North America
    • Baumgartner, A. L. (2022). Violence, Citizenship, and the Cortina War. These Ragged Edges: Histories of Violence on the U.S.-Mexico Border
    • Baumgartner, A. L. (2022). The Mexican-American War. Cambridge History of America and the World University of Cambridge Press.
    • Baumgartner, A. L. (2020). Minerva. As If She Were Free: A Collective Biography of Women and Emancipation in the Americas University of Cambridge Press.

    Journal Article

    • Baumgartner, A. L. (2023). Burrill Daniel’s Claim: A Freedom Seeker in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, 1865-70. Southwestern Historical Quarterly. Vol. Summer 2023, pp. 80-106.
    • Baumgartner, A. L. (2023). The Rivers of America: Colonialism and the History of Naming. Journal of Early American History.
    • Baumgartner, A. L. (2022). Enforcing the Fugitive Slave Acts in the South: Federalism, Irony, and the Conflict of Jurisdictions, 1787-1861. Journal of Southern History.
    • Baumgartner, A. L. (2021). “The Massacre at Gracias a Dios: Mobility and Violence on the Lower Rio Grande, 1821-1856,”. Western Historical Quarterly.
    • Baumgartner, A. L. (2015). ‘The Line of Positive Safety:’ Borders and Boundaries in the Rio Grande Valley, 1848-1880. Journal of American History. pp. 72-96.
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