Hampton Smith
I am a doctoral candidate in the History, Theory, and Criticism of Art and Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology whose research examines the art, material culture, and architecture across the transatlantic world in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Currently, I am writing my dissertation, “Making against Slavery: A Material History of Abolition in the Early United States.”
My scholarly work has been supported by the Henry Luce Foundation and the American Council for Learned Societies, the American Antiquarian Society, the Library Company of Philadelphia, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, among others. I am also a Junior Fellow in the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography.
For the 2025-2026 academic year, I am the Joe and Wanda Corn Predoctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Museum of American History.
Publications
EDITED VOLUMES
“Heat,” Thresholds 51. Co-edited with Zachary DeGuilio. Cambridge: MA, MIT Press, Spring 2023
PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLES
“Tapping Canvases: George Inness, Turpentine, and Racial Capitalism,” American Art, Spring 2024.
“Insurgent Tooling and the Collective Making of Slave Revolts” Journal18, Fall 2024.
REVIEWS