Lee B. Wilson

Associate Professor

Contact
Department of History
Office: Hardin 123
Email: wilson1@clemson.edu

Education
Ph.D., University of Virginia (2014); J.D., Fordham University (2006)

Research Interests
Early North America and the Caribbean; Legal History; African American History

Lee B. Wilson is a historian of colonial British America and the early modern Atlantic world. Her research interests include the legal history of early American slave societies, colonial property law, and legal discourse. Her book manuscript, entitled Bonds of Empire: The English Origins of Slave Law in South Carolina and British Plantation America, 1669-1783 (Cambridge University Press, 2021), examines how colonists adapted English law to commodify enslaved people and how this process ultimately facilitated the dehumanization of people of African descent. Dr. Wilson received her J.D. from Fordham University, and she worked for three years as a litigator handling complex insurance coverage matters, including multi-billion dollar claims related to the World Trade Center disaster. Her work has been supported by the American Historical Association, the American Society for Legal History, the Harvard University and Cambridge University History Project, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, and the Buckner W. Clay Endowment for the Humanities. Dr. Wilson’s current book project, tentatively entitled Treason in Early America, examines early treason prosecutions in order to understand how American colonists transformed this distinctive legal category into a powerful political weapon.

Selected Professional Works

Books (Published)

Bonds of Empire: The English Origins of Slave Law in South Carolina and British Plantation America, 1669-1783 (Cambridge University Press, 2021)

Journal Articles & Book Chapters (Published)

“From Person to Thing: Legal Language and the Dehumanization of Slaves in British Plantation America, 1700-1763,” Studies in Law, Politics, and Society (forthcoming)

Book Review, Matthew Mulcahy, Hubs of Empire: The Southeastern Lowcountry and British Caribbean (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014), in New West Indian Guide 90 (2016): 21-22.

“Worlds of Violence,” Reviews in American History 44 (2016): 532-38.

“A ‘Manifest Violation’ of the Rights of Englishmen: Rights-Talk and the Law of Property in Early Eighteenth-Century Jamaica,” Law and History Review 33 (2015): 543-75.