Steven Deyle
Associate Professor

Phone: (713) 743-3104
Email: shdeyle@uh.edu
Office: 539 Agnes Arnold Hall

Steven Deyle specializes in 19th Century U.S. social and political history, with a particular interest in slavery and the Old South.  He received his B.A. from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University.  He came to the University of Houston in 2006.

Teaching

Professor Deyle has taught a wide variety of courses in U.S. history, including, at the undergraduate level, both halves of the survey, Jacksonian America, Civil War and Reconstruction, Slavery and American Society, Social Reform Movements in Antebellum America, and 19th Century Political History.  He has likewise offered classes focusing on history and film, such as The American Civil War and Film, and Sex and Violence in the Old South.  Finally, he has taught a number of courses at the graduate level in 19th Century American history.

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Research Interests

Professor Deyle’s first book, Carry Me Back: The Domestic Slave Trade in American Life (2005), examines both the fundamentals of the domestic slave trade, or the buying and selling of American-born slaves, and the larger impact it had on American society.  It was the 2005 winner of the Southern Historical Association’s Bennett H. Wall Award for the best book on southern business or economic history published within the previous two years.  It was also nominated by Yale University’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition as one of three finalists for the society’s annual Frederick Douglass Prize.

Professor Deyle is currently working on a new book project entitled “Honorable Men: Isaac Bolton, Nathan Bedford Forrest, and the Murder of James McMillan.”  This project revolves around a controversial 1857 murder trial in Memphis, Tennessee.  He believes that this particular case can add greatly to our understanding of the cultural and social makeup of the antebellum South. 

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Prominent Fellowships:

Resident Fellow at the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University; New Haven, CT, 2011-12.

Joyce Tracy Fellowship, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, MA, 2009.

Selected Publications

Book

• Carry Me Back: The Domestic Slave Trade in American Life (Oxford University Press, 2005). https://www.amazon.com/Carry-Me-Back-Domestic-American/dp/0195310195 

• “The Domestic Slave Trade,” in Michael Perman and Amy Murrell Taylor, eds., Major Problems in the Civil War and Reconstruction, 3^rd ed. (Boston, MA: Wadsworth, 2011), 50-65. 

• “Rethinking the Slave Trade: Slave Traders and the Market Revolution in the South,” in The Old South’s Modern Worlds: Slavery, Region, and Nation in the Age of Progress (Oxford University Press, 2011), 104-19. 

• “An ‘abominable’ New Trade: The Closing of the African Slave Trade and the Changing Patterns of U.S. Political Power, 1808-60,” William and Mary Quarterly, 66 (October 2009), 832-49. 

• “The Domestic Slave Trade in America: The Lifeblood of the Southern Slave System,” in Walter Johnson, ed., The Chattel Principle: Internal Slave Trades in the Americas (Yale University Press, 2005), 91-116. 

• "The Irony of Liberty: The Origins of the Domestic Slave Trade," Journal of the Early Republic, 12 (Spring 1992), 37-62.

Prominent Film and Television Projects:

Historical consultant and member of the Creative Team, 12 Years a Slave (Academy Award Winner—Best Picture), Plan B Productions (Brad Pitt’s production company), 2013. 

On-air commentator and historical consultant, The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross (Emmy Award Winner—Outstanding Historical Programing), hosted by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., PBS, 2013.           

On-air commentator and historical consultant, “Emmitt Smith,” Who Do You Think You Are? (US), Season One, Episode Two, NBC, 2009.  

Portion featuring Professor Deyle can be found at (23:25-27:35). Also available on Peacock. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfG7Y8mJWDQ