RESEARCH INTERESTS
I am a cultural and social historian of the economy with a particular interest in illicit commerce and how it shapes modern capitalism. Geographically, I have focused on the Indian Ocean but I study and teach transnational and global history more generally. Before coming to Rutgers I was jointly appointed in the Departments of History and Economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
My first book, Margins of the Market: Trafficking and Capitalism across the Arabian Sea (University of California Press, 2016), traced the hidden networks that trafficked slaves, guns and gold across the Arabian Sea in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. The book shows how capitalism is constituted by the constant process of distinguishing and delegitimizing certain forms of exchange as trafficking. Connected to this project I have several articles and chapters on trust, corruption, violence, and diaspora in the Indian Ocean world.
I am currently working on a second project tentatively entitled, “Opiates of the Masses: A Biography of Humanity in the Time of Capital.” This research explores the consumption of cannabis, opium and other narcotics with particular concern for how and why they are consumed by the working classes in the global south. I’m interested in how these substances allow human bodies to adapt to the demands of an industrial production and the time pressures of a capitalist economy. The project is not concerned with drugs so much as the fraught relationship between capitalist markets and the human experience of pain and pleasure.
COURSES TAUGHT
- 506:102 World History 1500 to the Present
- 506:220 Piracy: A Global History
- 506:299 History Workshop: Slavery and Islam
- 508:337 Pilgrims, Pirates and Poets: Globalization in the Indian Ocean World
- 510:541 Colloquium on Global History: Capitalism and its Discontents (Graduate)
- 090:293 The Political Economy of Piracy (Honors)
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
- Margins of the Market: Trafficking and Capitalism across the Arabian Sea (University of California Press, 2016).
- “On Principals and Agency: Reassembling Trust in Indian Ocean Commerce” in Comparative Studies in Society and History 61, no. 2, (April 2019): 242-268
- “Smoke on the Water: Cannabis Smuggling, Corruption and the Janus-Faced Colonial State” in History Workshop Journal 86, (October 2018): 67-89
- “Spectres of Pan-Islam: Methodological Nationalism and the Origins of Decolonization” in Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 45, no. 6 (December 2017): 942-968.
- “Sindbad’s Ocean: Reframing the Market in the Middle East,” Roundtable essay in the International Journal of Middle East Studies 48, no. 4 (December 2016): 754-757.
- “Trafficking Labor: Abolition and the Exchange of Labor across the Arabian Sea, 1861-1947” in Slavery & Abolition 33, no. 1, (March 2012): 139-156.
SELECTED FELLOWSHIPS, GRANTS AND AWARDS
- Ralph Gomory Prize, The Business History Conference (for Margins of the Market)
- Roger Owen Book Award, Middle East Studies Association (for Margins of the Market)
- Middle East Political Economy Prize, The Political Economy Project (for Margins of the Market)
- First Monograph Prize in Economic and Social History, The Economic History Society (for Margins of the Market)
- Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, John E. Sawyer Seminar Grant, Co-Principal Investigator
- Business History Conference, Herman E. Krooss Dissertation Prize (Finalist)
- Social Science Research Council, Postdoctoral Fellowship for Transregional Research
