Evan Turiano is a scholar interested in slavery, civil rights, politics, and law in the United States. He received his Ph.D. in History from the Graduate Center, City University of New York in 2022.
He is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Law at Trinity College. At Trinity, he teaches courses related to American legal history, law & society, and a host of contemporary political and legal issues. Prior to coming to Trinty, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher at Wesleyan University's Center for the Study of Guns and Society. He's held fellowships at Yale University, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the John Carter Brown Library, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Virginia Museum of History and Culture, and the University of Virginia's Nau Center for Civil War History. He previously taught at Queens College, CUNY from 2017 to 2023.
Evan is working on a book manuscript, under advance contract with LSU Press's "Antislavery, Abolition, and the Atlantic World" series, which examines the contested legal rights of African Americans accused of being fugitive slaves from before the American Revolution through the onset of the Civil War. His research demonstrates how conflicts over race, property, and civil rights embodied in fugitive slave conflicts shaped the development of American federalism, constitutional politics, and the contours of national citizenship.
His scholarship has appeared in the Journal of the Civil War Era, and he has reviewed books in the Journal of Southern History, American Nineteenth Century History, Pennsylvania History, and other venues. His public writing has appeared in The Washington Post's Made By History and Jacobin. He is a contributing editor at The Gotham Center for New York City History.
His dissertation has received numerous national awards and accolades. It received the 2024 Hay-Nicolay Dissertation Prize (Abraham Lincoln Association and the Abraham Lincoln Institute), the 2023 Rachel Hines Prize (College of Charleston Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World Program); and the 2023 Bradford-Delaney Dissertation Prize from the St. George Tucker Society. Additionally, it was a finalist for the Southern Historical Association's C. Vann Woodward Award.