Charles Gibson Distinguished University Professor Emerita of History
rjscott@umich.edu
Office Information:
969 Legal Research Building, 625 South State Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109
phone: 734.763.4779
Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies;
ASC Faculty;
Donia Human Rights Center;
DHRC Faculty Associates;
African Studies Center;
LACS Emeriti
Education/Degree:
A.B., Harvard, Radcliffe College, 1971; M.Phil., London School of Economics, 1973; Ph.D., Princeton University, 1982
Ph.D., Princeton University, 1982
About
Rebecca J. Scott is the Charles Gibson Distinguished University Professor of History Emerita and Professor of Law Emerita at the University of Michigan. At the Law School, she taught a course on civil rights and the boundaries of citizenship in historical perspective as well as a seminar on the law in slavery and freedom. She continues to co-direct (with Professor Sam Erman, ’07) the Law in Slavery and Freedom Project.
Her most recent book is Jean Hébrard and Rebecca J. Scott, De l’Esclavage à la liberté (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 2026). Scott and Hébrard previously co-authored Freedom Papers: An Atlantic Odyssey in the Age of Emancipation (Harvard University Press, 2012). Both books trace one family’s interaction with law and official documents across five generations, from West Africa to the Americas to Europe. Freedom Papers received the 2012 Albert Beveridge Book Award in American History and the James Rawley Book Prize in Atlantic History, both from the American Historical Association.
