Marcus Rediker

Rediker published his dissertation, Society and Culture Among Anglo-American Deep Sea Sailors, 1700-1750, in 1982.

At the University of Pennsylvania, Rediker earned a Master of Arts and Ph.D. in history.

The painting, which was never finished, is theorized to have been based on the 1833 loss of Amphitrite, a British merchant and convict ship.

On her final voyage, Amphitrite carried 108 female convicts and 12 children, all of whom perished.

According to Rediker, the box was meant as a tribute to the ship's victims.

Rediker alleged that the museum had engaged in censorship, though the museum claimed it was denied due to uncertainty surrounding the depicted ship's identity and the box's "domineering presence".

Marcus Buford Rediker (born October 14, 1951) is an American historian, writer, professor, and social activist.

Rediker was born in Owensboro, Kentucky, on October 14, 1951, to Buford and Faye Rediker.

He is the first of two children, preceding his brother Shayne.

Rediker's family came from a working class background, and they later moved to Nashville, Tennessee and Richmond, Virginia.

Rediker has credited storytelling from his grandfather, a coal miner, as one of his earliest influences.

A first-generation college student, Rediker began attending Vanderbilt University in 1969 before dropping out in 1971.

Commenting on his time at Vanderbilt, Rediker recalled that he felt out of place due to the university's connections with the Southern elite.

Initially attending on a basketball scholarship, Rediker credited campus protests against the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, and the black power movement with influencing both his interest in history and his political beliefs.

In Richmond, Rediker worked in a DuPont textile factory for three years making cellophane.

The factory faced extreme racial tension, with Rediker describing supporters of Malcolm X and a Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan working as employees.

Rediker's experiences with his co-workers fueled his passion for social history.

Rediker's job motivated him to read books and attend two night school courses on the American and French Revolution.

After being laid off from his factory job, Rediker enrolled at Virginia Commonwealth University.

He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1976 and attended the University of Pennsylvania for graduate study, earning an Master of Arts and Ph.D. in history.

In 1976, Rediker graduated from the university with a Bachelor of Arts in history.

Rediker later attended the University of Pennsylvania for his graduate studies, working under Richard Slator Dunn.

Originally intending to study Caribbean history, Rediker developed a deep fascination in Atlantic history while writing a research paper on sailors and pirates.

He taught at Georgetown University from 1982 to 1994 and is currently a Distinguished Professor of Atlantic History of the Department of History at the University of Pittsburgh.

Rediker is best known for his books on piracy and the Middle Passage that follow a people's history narrative.

On occasion, Rediker has collaborated with contemporaries such as Peter Lindbaugh and Paul Buhle.

Rediker has also worked on the production of a one-man show based on Quaker abolitionist Benjamin Lay with playwright Naomi Wallace as well as a documentary on La Amistad with filmmaker Tony Buba.

Politically, Rediker has described himself as far-left, but he does not align with any political party.

Rediker is a staunch opponent of capital punishment and supports reparations for slavery.

Rediker began teaching at Georgetown University in 1982 before leaving to work at the University of Pittsburgh in 1994, where he has primarily taught ever since.

Rediker received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, American Council of Learned Societies, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and was recognized by the Organization of American Historians as a distinguished lecturer from 2002 to 2008.

He is a two-time winner of the Merle Curti Award and won the George Washington Book Prize in 2008.

In May 2013, Rediker and filmmaker Tony Buba traveled to the home villages of slaves that revolted on the Spanish vessel La Amistad in July 1839.

In a 2018 interview, Rediker said that "It took me many years but I finally realized that the kinds of stories I like to tell, and the books I have written, have his Appalachian storytelling tradition behind them."

Rediker was the Dan and Maggie Inouye Distinguished Chair of Democratic Ideals at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa during the 2019-2020 semester.

Throughout his career, Rediker has written several books on Atlantic social, labor, and maritime history.

For certain books, he collaborated with contemporaries such as Peter Linebaugh and Paul Buhle.

In 2023, Rediker and Buhle co-wrote two graphic novels illustrated by David Lester.

Rediker has written opinion pieces for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, The Nation, and The New York Times.

After serving five years as guest curator of the Tate Britain art museum in the J.M.W. Turner Gallery, Rediker resigned in June 2023 after his request to display a punishment box in front of Turner's 1835 painting, A Disaster at Sea, was denied by the museum.