Academia

A Brief Bio

Lo Faber is a PhD candidate at Princeton, where he has also completed his Masters Degree. He has studied with mentors including Sean Wilentz, Peter Silver, Linda Colley, and John Murrin. His broad research interests include the history of US expansion in the Old Southwest; land policy and land speculation in the early republic; the intellectual and cultural history of Jeffersonian and Jacksonian America; and the making of American nationalism and national identity across the long 19th century. He is spending this year in New Orleans doing full-time research for his dissertation, which deals with the social transformation of New Orleans in the wake of the Louisiana Purchase. Before being seduced by the dark underworld of historical scholarship, Lo made an honest living for twelve years as a rock guitarist.

Dissertation

Building the Land of Dreams: the American Transformation of New Orleans, 1800-1820. The gradual and contested attachment of Louisiana to the expanding United States transformed the Spanish colonial port of New Orleans from a marginal military outpost into the economic and cultural heart of the American South. Democracy and capitalism, and the high expectations that came with them, promised a limitless capacity to liberate human potential, but also brought unprecedented social power to human wealth. I tell this story through the lens of events including the Burr Conspiracy, the slave rebellion of 1811, the War of 1812, and the struggle between Edward Livingston and the City of New Orleans over the Batture property.

Documents and Things

My basic 1-page CV is here.

A blog that I maintain somewhat sporadically to track dissertation progress is here.

Some juvenilia that I produced as an undergraduate is here and here. Please do not quote, cite, etc etc etc.

History Links

Princeton History Dept
McNeil Center
Historic New Orleans Collection
New Orleans Public Library
Common-Place
History Cooperative
H-Net

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