TUSCALOOSA, Ala. -- Dr. Joshua Rothman, assistant professor of history at The University of Alabama, will hold a fellowship at the American Antiquarian Society for the spring 2006 semester.

Rothman has been named an American Antiquarian Society-National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow and will conduct research at the AAS in Worcester, Mass.

“I applied to the American Antiquarian Society because they have an outstanding collection of early 19th century newspapers that will help me complete my research,” Rothman said.

Rothman will conduct research for a book tentatively titled, “Slavery and Speculation in the Flush Times: The Heart of Jacksonian America.” The book will be a study of American expansion to the cotton frontiers of the Old Southwest – places like Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas and West Tennessee.

“The story at the center of the book is a series of anti-gambling riots and slave insurrection scares that broke out across the region in the summer of 1835.

“I’m trying to use that story to make a case about the meanings of slavery, violence and freewheeling economic speculation for the national character in an era when white Americans were becoming increasingly confident in their own prospects as individuals and increasingly optimistic about the future of the United States,” Rothman said.

The AAS, founded in 1812, is an educational society and a national research library which contains pre-20th century American history and culture. The society offers an extensive fellowship program for scholars, artists and writers to come from all over the world to research and study early America.