Eugene D. Genovese
Encyclopedia
Eugene Dominic Genovese (born May 19, 1930) is an American
historian
of the American South
and American slavery. He has been noted for bringing a Marxist
perspective to the study of power, class and relations between planters
and slaves in the South. His work Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made won the Bancroft Prize
. Since then, however, he has abandoned the Left and Marxism and embraced traditionalist conservatism
.
. Raised in a working-class ethnic Italian
family in Brooklyn, he was active in the Communist youth movement until he was expelled "for having zigged when I was supposed to zag." He earned his Bachelor of Arts
from Brooklyn College
in 1953 and his Master of Arts
in 1955 and a Ph.D
in history
in 1959, both from Columbia University
.
, when there were a growing range of opinions about the war and the Civil Rights Movement, he was a controversial figure as a history professor at Rutgers University
(1963-1967), and at the University of Rochester
(1969-1986), where he was elected chairman of the Department of History. From 1986, Genovese taught part-time at the College of William and Mary, Georgia Institute of Technology
, University of Georgia
, Emory University
and Georgia State University
.
He was an editor of Studies on the Left and Marxist Perspectives. He was famous for his disputes with colleagues left, right and center. Defeating Oscar Handlin
in 1978, he became the first Marxist president of the Organization of American Historians
.
In 1998, after moving to the right
in his thinking, Genovese founded The Historical Society, with the goal of bringing together historians united by a traditional methodology.
at Rutgers University
where he was teaching, Genovese stated, "Those of you who know me know that I am a Marxist and a Socialist. Therefore, unlike most of my distinguished colleagues here this morning, I do not fear or regret the impending Viet Cong victory in Vietnam. I welcome it." This comment was widely reported and generated a backlash of criticism. Politicians questioned Genovese's judgment and sensitivity to the responsibility inherent in being a Rutgers professor. No state laws or university regulations had been broken, and Genovese was supported by fellow faculty members on grounds of academic freedom
. He was not dismissed from his teaching position.
Wayne Dumont
, a gubernatorial candidate challenging Governor Richard J. Hughes
, used Genovese's statement as a campaign issue. Rutgers President Mason Gross refused to re-examine the university's position, and Dumont lost to Governor Hughes. President Gross's defense of academic freedom
was honored by the American Association of University Professors
, who presented him and Rutgers with its Alexander Meiklejohn
Award in 1966. Genovese moved to Canada and taught at Sir George Williams University in Montreal (1967-1969).
In 1968, Genovese signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.
in The Nature of Cultural Things (1964) for a materialist alternative to the idealistic framework of Frank Tannenbaum
, Stanley Elkins
, Gilberto Freyre
, and others. Tannenbaum had first introduced the hemispheric perspective by showing that the current status of blacks in various societies of the Western Hemisphere had roots in the attitude toward the black as a slave, which reflected the total religious, legal, and moral history of the enslaving whites.
However, Tannenbaum ignored the material foundations of slave society, most particularly class relations. Later students have qualified his perspectives but have worked within the framework of an "idealistic" interpretation. Harris, on the other hand, insisted that material conditions determined social relations and necessarily prevailed over counter-tendencies in the historical tradition. Harris' work revealed him to be an economic determinist and, as such, ahistorical. By attempting to construct a materialism that bypassed ideological and psychological elements in the formation of social classes, he passed into a "variant of vulgar Marxism" and offered only soulless mechanism.
In the 1960s, Genovese in his Marxist stage depicted the masters of the slaves as part of a "seigneurial" society that was anti-modern, pre-bourgeois and pre-capitalist. In 1970, Stampp reviewing Genovese's The World the Slaveholders Made (1969) found fault with the quantity and quality of the evidence used to support the book's arguments. He also took issue with the attempt to apply a Marxian interpretation to the Southern slave system.
In his best-known book Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (1974), Genovese examined the society of the slaves. This book won the national Bancroft Prize in History. Genovese viewed the antebellum South as a closed and organically united paternalist society that exploited and attempted to dehumanize the slaves. Genovese paid close attention to the role of religion as a form of resistance in the daily life of the slaves because slaves used it to give themselves a sense of humanity. He redefined resistance to slavery as all efforts by which slaves rejected their status as slaves, including their religion, music and the culture they built. Genovese applied Antonio Gramsci
's theory of cultural hegemony to the slave South.
He placed paternalism at the center of the master-slave relationship. Both masters and slaves embraced paternalism, though for different reasons and with varying notions of what paternalism meant. For the slaveowners, paternalism allowed them to think of themselves as benevolent and to justify their appropriation of their slaves' labor. Paternalist ideology, they believed, also gave the institution of slavery a more benign face and helped deflate the increasingly strong abolitionist critique of the institution.
Slaves, on the other hand, recognized that paternalist ideology could be twisted to suit their own ends, by providing them with improved living and working conditions. Slaves struggled mightily to convert the benevolent "gifts" or "privileges" bestowed upon them by their masters into customary rights which masters would not violate. The reciprocity of paternalism could work to the slaves' advantage by allowing them to demand more humane treatment from their masters.
Religion was an important theme in Roll, Jordan, Roll and other studies. Genovese noted that Evangelicals
recognized slavery as the root of Southern ills and sought some reforms, but no substantial change of the system. Genovese's contention was that after 1830, southern Christianity became part of social control of the slaves. Furthermore, he argued that the slaves' religion was not conducive to millenarianism or a revolutionary political tradition. Rather, it helped them survive and resist.
King (1979) argued that Genovese incorporated the theoretical concepts of certain 20th-century revisionist Marxists, especially the ideas of Antonio Gramsci
and his construct of hegemony
. Genovese's analysis of slavery, the blacks, and the American South elicited criticisms of various portions of his work, but historians agreed on the importance of his contributions. Areas of criticism included Genovese's placing of the master-slave relationship at the center of his interpretation of the American South, his views on southern white guilt
over slavery, his employment of Gramsci's construct of hegemony
, and his interpretations of southern white class interests, slave religion, the strength of the slave family, the existence of slave culture, and theory of the generation of black nationalism in the antebellum years.
In his 1979 book From Rebellion to Revolution, Genovese depicted a change in slave rebellions, from attempts to win freedom to an effort to overthrow slavery as a social system. In the 1983 book he co-wrote with his wife, The Fruits of Merchant Capital, Genovese underscored what he regarded as tensions between bourgeois property and slavery. In the view of the Genoveses, slavery was a "hybrid system" that was both pre-capitalist and capitalist.
Genovese's statement that "Rarely these days, even on Southern campuses, is it possible to acknowledge the achievements of white people in the South" has been adopted as a mission statement by the Abbeville Institute.
. In the 1930s, these critics and poets collectively wrote I'll Take My Stand, their critique of Enlightenment
humanism
.
Genovese concluded that by recognizing human sinfulness and limitation, the critics more accurately described human nature than did other thinkers. The Southern Agrarians, he noted, also posed a challenge to modern American conservatives, with their mistaken belief in market capitalism's compatibility with traditional social values and family structures. Genovese agreed with the Agrarians in concluding that capitalism destroyed those institutions.
In his personal views, Genovese has moved to the right. Where he once denounced liberalism from a radical left perspective, he now does so as a traditionalist conservative
. His change in thinking included converting to Roman Catholicism
in December 1996. His wife Elizabeth Fox-Genovese
had also shifted her thinking and had already converted.
. She died in 2007, and the following year Genovese published a tribute to her, Miss Betsey: A Memoir of Marriage.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
historian
Historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...
of the American South
Southern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...
and American slavery. He has been noted for bringing a Marxist
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
perspective to the study of power, class and relations between planters
Plantation
A plantation is a long artificially established forest, farm or estate, where crops are grown for sale, often in distant markets rather than for local on-site consumption...
and slaves in the South. His work Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made won the Bancroft Prize
Bancroft Prize
The Bancroft Prize is awarded each year by the trustees of Columbia University for books about diplomacy or the history of the Americas. It was established in 1948 by a bequest from Frederic Bancroft...
. Since then, however, he has abandoned the Left and Marxism and embraced traditionalist conservatism
Traditionalist Conservatism
Traditionalist conservatism, also known as "traditional conservatism," "traditionalism," "Burkean conservatism", "classical conservatism" and , "Toryism", describes a political philosophy emphasizing the need for the principles of natural law and transcendent moral order, tradition, hierarchy and...
.
Early life and education
Genovese was born in BrooklynBrooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
. Raised in a working-class ethnic Italian
Italian American
An Italian American , is an American of Italian ancestry. The designation may also refer to someone possessing Italian and American dual citizenship...
family in Brooklyn, he was active in the Communist youth movement until he was expelled "for having zigged when I was supposed to zag." He earned his Bachelor of Arts
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
from Brooklyn College
Brooklyn College
Brooklyn College is a senior college of the City University of New York, located in Brooklyn, New York, United States.Established in 1930 by the New York City Board of Higher Education, the College had its beginnings as the Downtown Brooklyn branches of Hunter College and the City College of New...
in 1953 and his Master of Arts
Master of Arts (postgraduate)
A Master of Arts from the Latin Magister Artium, is a type of Master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The M.A. is usually contrasted with the M.S. or M.Sc. degrees...
in 1955 and a Ph.D
Doctor of Philosophy
Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...
in history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
in 1959, both from Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
.
Career
Genovese first taught at the Polytechnic Institute in Brooklyn from 1958 to 1963. During the early years of the Vietnam WarVietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
, when there were a growing range of opinions about the war and the Civil Rights Movement, he was a controversial figure as a history professor at Rutgers University
Rutgers University
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...
(1963-1967), and at the University of Rochester
University of Rochester
The University of Rochester is a private, nonsectarian, research university in Rochester, New York, United States. The university grants undergraduate and graduate degrees, including doctoral and professional degrees. The university has six schools and various interdisciplinary programs.The...
(1969-1986), where he was elected chairman of the Department of History. From 1986, Genovese taught part-time at the College of William and Mary, Georgia Institute of Technology
Georgia Institute of Technology
The Georgia Institute of Technology is a public research university in Atlanta, Georgia, in the United States...
, University of Georgia
University of Georgia
The University of Georgia is a public research university located in Athens, Georgia, United States. Founded in 1785, it is the oldest and largest of the state's institutions of higher learning and is one of multiple schools to claim the title of the oldest public university in the United States...
, Emory University
Emory University
Emory University is a private research university in metropolitan Atlanta, located in the Druid Hills section of unincorporated DeKalb County, Georgia, United States. The university was founded as Emory College in 1836 in Oxford, Georgia by a small group of Methodists and was named in honor of...
and Georgia State University
Georgia State University
Georgia State University is a research university in downtown Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Founded in 1913, it serves about 30,000 students and is one of the University System of Georgia's four research universities...
.
He was an editor of Studies on the Left and Marxist Perspectives. He was famous for his disputes with colleagues left, right and center. Defeating Oscar Handlin
Oscar Handlin
Oscar Handlin was an American historian. As a professor of history at Harvard University for over 50 years, he directed 80 PhD dissertations and helped promote social and ethnic history...
in 1978, he became the first Marxist president of the Organization of American Historians
Organization of American Historians
The Organization of American Historians , formerly known as the Mississippi Valley Historical Association, is the largest professional society dedicated to the teaching and study of American history. OAH's members in the U.S...
.
In 1998, after moving to the right
Right-wing politics
In politics, Right, right-wing and rightist generally refer to support for a hierarchical society justified on the basis of an appeal to natural law or tradition. To varying degrees, the Right rejects the egalitarian objectives of left-wing politics, claiming that the imposition of equality is...
in his thinking, Genovese founded The Historical Society, with the goal of bringing together historians united by a traditional methodology.
Controversy during Vietnam war
At an April 23, 1965 teach-inTeach-in
A teach-in is similar to a general educational forum on any complicated issue, usually an issue involving current political affairs. The main difference between a teach-in and a seminar is the refusal to limit the discussion to a specific frame of time or an academic scope of the topic. Teach-ins...
at Rutgers University
Rutgers University
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...
where he was teaching, Genovese stated, "Those of you who know me know that I am a Marxist and a Socialist. Therefore, unlike most of my distinguished colleagues here this morning, I do not fear or regret the impending Viet Cong victory in Vietnam. I welcome it." This comment was widely reported and generated a backlash of criticism. Politicians questioned Genovese's judgment and sensitivity to the responsibility inherent in being a Rutgers professor. No state laws or university regulations had been broken, and Genovese was supported by fellow faculty members on grounds of academic freedom
Academic freedom
Academic freedom is the belief that the freedom of inquiry by students and faculty members is essential to the mission of the academy, and that scholars should have freedom to teach or communicate ideas or facts without being targeted for repression, job loss, or imprisonment.Academic freedom is a...
. He was not dismissed from his teaching position.
Wayne Dumont
Wayne Dumont
Wayne Dumont, Jr. was an American Republican Party politician from New Jersey. He served in the New Jersey Senate for more than 30 years, representing the 15th Legislative District until 1982 and the 24th Legislative District until his retirement in 1990...
, a gubernatorial candidate challenging Governor Richard J. Hughes
Richard J. Hughes
Richard Joseph Hughes was an American Democratic Party politician, who served as the 45th Governor of New Jersey from 1962 to 1970, and as Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court from 1973–1979...
, used Genovese's statement as a campaign issue. Rutgers President Mason Gross refused to re-examine the university's position, and Dumont lost to Governor Hughes. President Gross's defense of academic freedom
Academic freedom
Academic freedom is the belief that the freedom of inquiry by students and faculty members is essential to the mission of the academy, and that scholars should have freedom to teach or communicate ideas or facts without being targeted for repression, job loss, or imprisonment.Academic freedom is a...
was honored by the American Association of University Professors
American Association of University Professors
The American Association of University Professors is an organization of professors and other academics in the United States. AAUP membership is about 47,000, with over 500 local campus chapters and 39 state organizations...
, who presented him and Rutgers with its Alexander Meiklejohn
Alexander Meiklejohn
Alexander Meiklejohn was a philosopher, university administrator, and free-speech advocate. He served as dean of Brown University and president of Amherst College.- Life and career:...
Award in 1966. Genovese moved to Canada and taught at Sir George Williams University in Montreal (1967-1969).
In 1968, Genovese signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.
Slavery studies
Genovese, in 1968, provided a critical historiography of the major studies of slavery in the Americas from a hemispheric perspective. He considered the demand by Marxist anthropologist Marvin HarrisMarvin Harris
Marvin Harris was an American anthropologist. He was born in Brooklyn, New York. A prolific writer, he was highly influential in the development of cultural materialism...
in The Nature of Cultural Things (1964) for a materialist alternative to the idealistic framework of Frank Tannenbaum
Frank Tannenbaum
Frank Tannenbaum was an Austrian-American historian, sociologist and criminologist who immigrated to the United States in 1905. He received his bachelor's degree from Columbia University in 1921 and later received his Ph.D. in economics from the Brookings Institution...
, Stanley Elkins
Stanley Elkins
Stanley M. Elkins is the Sydenham Clark Parsons Professor Emeritus of history at Smith College.-Slavery:Slavery : A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life , based on Elkin's doctoral dissertation at Columbia University, was theoretically innovative and enormously influential in the...
, Gilberto Freyre
Gilberto Freyre
Gilberto de Mello Freyre was a Brazilian sociologist, anthropologist, historian, writer, painter and congressman. His best-known work is a sociological treatise named Casa-Grande & Senzala...
, and others. Tannenbaum had first introduced the hemispheric perspective by showing that the current status of blacks in various societies of the Western Hemisphere had roots in the attitude toward the black as a slave, which reflected the total religious, legal, and moral history of the enslaving whites.
However, Tannenbaum ignored the material foundations of slave society, most particularly class relations. Later students have qualified his perspectives but have worked within the framework of an "idealistic" interpretation. Harris, on the other hand, insisted that material conditions determined social relations and necessarily prevailed over counter-tendencies in the historical tradition. Harris' work revealed him to be an economic determinist and, as such, ahistorical. By attempting to construct a materialism that bypassed ideological and psychological elements in the formation of social classes, he passed into a "variant of vulgar Marxism" and offered only soulless mechanism.
In the 1960s, Genovese in his Marxist stage depicted the masters of the slaves as part of a "seigneurial" society that was anti-modern, pre-bourgeois and pre-capitalist. In 1970, Stampp reviewing Genovese's The World the Slaveholders Made (1969) found fault with the quantity and quality of the evidence used to support the book's arguments. He also took issue with the attempt to apply a Marxian interpretation to the Southern slave system.
In his best-known book Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (1974), Genovese examined the society of the slaves. This book won the national Bancroft Prize in History. Genovese viewed the antebellum South as a closed and organically united paternalist society that exploited and attempted to dehumanize the slaves. Genovese paid close attention to the role of religion as a form of resistance in the daily life of the slaves because slaves used it to give themselves a sense of humanity. He redefined resistance to slavery as all efforts by which slaves rejected their status as slaves, including their religion, music and the culture they built. Genovese applied Antonio Gramsci
Antonio Gramsci
Antonio Gramsci was an Italian writer, politician, political philosopher, and linguist. He was a founding member and onetime leader of the Communist Party of Italy and was imprisoned by Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime...
's theory of cultural hegemony to the slave South.
He placed paternalism at the center of the master-slave relationship. Both masters and slaves embraced paternalism, though for different reasons and with varying notions of what paternalism meant. For the slaveowners, paternalism allowed them to think of themselves as benevolent and to justify their appropriation of their slaves' labor. Paternalist ideology, they believed, also gave the institution of slavery a more benign face and helped deflate the increasingly strong abolitionist critique of the institution.
Slaves, on the other hand, recognized that paternalist ideology could be twisted to suit their own ends, by providing them with improved living and working conditions. Slaves struggled mightily to convert the benevolent "gifts" or "privileges" bestowed upon them by their masters into customary rights which masters would not violate. The reciprocity of paternalism could work to the slaves' advantage by allowing them to demand more humane treatment from their masters.
Religion was an important theme in Roll, Jordan, Roll and other studies. Genovese noted that Evangelicals
Evangelicalism
Evangelicalism is a Protestant Christian movement which began in Great Britain in the 1730s and gained popularity in the United States during the series of Great Awakenings of the 18th and 19th century.Its key commitments are:...
recognized slavery as the root of Southern ills and sought some reforms, but no substantial change of the system. Genovese's contention was that after 1830, southern Christianity became part of social control of the slaves. Furthermore, he argued that the slaves' religion was not conducive to millenarianism or a revolutionary political tradition. Rather, it helped them survive and resist.
King (1979) argued that Genovese incorporated the theoretical concepts of certain 20th-century revisionist Marxists, especially the ideas of Antonio Gramsci
Antonio Gramsci
Antonio Gramsci was an Italian writer, politician, political philosopher, and linguist. He was a founding member and onetime leader of the Communist Party of Italy and was imprisoned by Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime...
and his construct of hegemony
Hegemony
Hegemony is an indirect form of imperial dominance in which the hegemon rules sub-ordinate states by the implied means of power rather than direct military force. In Ancient Greece , hegemony denoted the politico–military dominance of a city-state over other city-states...
. Genovese's analysis of slavery, the blacks, and the American South elicited criticisms of various portions of his work, but historians agreed on the importance of his contributions. Areas of criticism included Genovese's placing of the master-slave relationship at the center of his interpretation of the American South, his views on southern white guilt
White guilt
White guilt refers to the concept of individual or collective guilt often said to be felt by some white people for the racist treatment of people of color by whites both historically and presently...
over slavery, his employment of Gramsci's construct of hegemony
Hegemony
Hegemony is an indirect form of imperial dominance in which the hegemon rules sub-ordinate states by the implied means of power rather than direct military force. In Ancient Greece , hegemony denoted the politico–military dominance of a city-state over other city-states...
, and his interpretations of southern white class interests, slave religion, the strength of the slave family, the existence of slave culture, and theory of the generation of black nationalism in the antebellum years.
In his 1979 book From Rebellion to Revolution, Genovese depicted a change in slave rebellions, from attempts to win freedom to an effort to overthrow slavery as a social system. In the 1983 book he co-wrote with his wife, The Fruits of Merchant Capital, Genovese underscored what he regarded as tensions between bourgeois property and slavery. In the view of the Genoveses, slavery was a "hybrid system" that was both pre-capitalist and capitalist.
Genovese's statement that "Rarely these days, even on Southern campuses, is it possible to acknowledge the achievements of white people in the South" has been adopted as a mission statement by the Abbeville Institute.
Shift to the right
Starting in the 1990s, Genovese turned his attention to the history of conservatism in the South, a tradition which Genovese came to celebrate and adopt. In his study, The Southern Tradition: the Achievements and Limitations of an American Conservatism, he examined the Southern AgrariansSouthern Agrarians
The Southern Agrarians were a group of twelve American writers, poets, essayists, and novelists, all with roots in the Southern United States, who joined together to write a pro-Southern agrarian manifesto, a...
. In the 1930s, these critics and poets collectively wrote I'll Take My Stand, their critique of Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
humanism
Humanism
Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism....
.
Genovese concluded that by recognizing human sinfulness and limitation, the critics more accurately described human nature than did other thinkers. The Southern Agrarians, he noted, also posed a challenge to modern American conservatives, with their mistaken belief in market capitalism's compatibility with traditional social values and family structures. Genovese agreed with the Agrarians in concluding that capitalism destroyed those institutions.
In his personal views, Genovese has moved to the right. Where he once denounced liberalism from a radical left perspective, he now does so as a traditionalist conservative
Traditionalist Conservatism
Traditionalist conservatism, also known as "traditional conservatism," "traditionalism," "Burkean conservatism", "classical conservatism" and , "Toryism", describes a political philosophy emphasizing the need for the principles of natural law and transcendent moral order, tradition, hierarchy and...
. His change in thinking included converting to Roman Catholicism
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
in December 1996. His wife Elizabeth Fox-Genovese
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese
Elizabeth Ann Fox-Genovese was a feminist American historian particularly known for her writing about women in the Antebellum South...
had also shifted her thinking and had already converted.
Marriage and family
In 1969, Genovese married the historian Elizabeth FoxElizabeth Fox-Genovese
Elizabeth Ann Fox-Genovese was a feminist American historian particularly known for her writing about women in the Antebellum South...
. She died in 2007, and the following year Genovese published a tribute to her, Miss Betsey: A Memoir of Marriage.
Publications
- The Political Economy of Slavery: Studies in the Economy and the Society of the Slave South, 1965.
- "Materialism and Idealism in the History of Black Slavery in the Americas", Journal of Social History, 1968 1(4): 371-394. ISSN 0022-4529
- In Red and Black: Marxian Explorations in Southern and Afro-American History, 1971.
- The World the Slaveholders Made: Two Essays in Interpretation, 1969.
- Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made, 1974. Winner of the Bancroft Prize in History.
- co-written with Elizabeth Fox Genovese, "The Political Crisis of Social History: A Marxian Perspective", Journal of Social History, 10 (1976), pp. 205–20.
- From Rebellion to Revolution: Afro-American Slave Revolts in the Making of the Modern World, 1979.
- co-written with Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Fruits of Merchant Capital: Slavery and Bourgeois Property in the Rise and Expansion of Capitalism, 1983.
- The Slaveholders' Dilemma: Freedom and Progress in Southern Conservative Thought, 1820-1860, 1992.
- The Southern Tradition: The Achievement and Limitations of an American Conservatism, 1994.
- The Southern Front: History and Politics in the Cultural War, 1995.
- A Consuming Fire: The Fall of the Confederacy in the Mind of the White Christian South (Mercer University Lamar Memorial Lectures), 1998.
- co-written with Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, The Mind of the Master Class : History and Faith in the Southern Slaveholders' Worldview, 2005.
- Miss Betsey: A Memoir of Marriage, 2008.
- co-written with Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Slavery in White and Black: Class and Race in the Southern Slaveholders' New World Order, 2008.