John Bardes

Associate Professor
216A Himes Hall
jbardes@lsu.edu

Courses Taught

Antebellum South; Slavery in Baton Rouge; Slavery in American Film; Crime and Punishment in American History; U.S. History to 1865

 

Current Research Interests

Slavery and emancipation; policing and incarceration in the U.S. South

 

Education

PhD, Tulane University, 2020

MA, Tulane University, 2016

BA, Carleton College, 2008

 

Awards and Honors

Humanities Book of the Year, Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, 2024 (for The Carceral City)

Kemper and Leila Williams Prize in Louisiana History, Louisiana Historic Association and The Historic New Orleans Collection, 2024 (for The Carceral City)

Joe Trotter Prize for Best First Book in Urban History, Urban History Association, 2024 (for The Carceral City)

C. Vann Woodward Prize, Southern Historical Association, 2021

Mellon/ACLS Fellowship, American Council of Learned Societies, 2019-2020

 

Recent Articles

“Fugitive Sounds: A Reappraisal of Enslaved People’s Music in Antebellum New Orleans, 1814–1861,” co-authored with Benjamin Barson and Henry Stoll, Atlantic Studies 23 (spring 2026).

“‘A New Way of Smuggling Free Negroes’: Black Unauthorized Workers, Slavery, and the Police Power in Antebellum New Orleans,” Journal of the Early Republic 45 (spring 2025).

“Witnessing Ned Scott’s Coffin: Spectacular Police Violence in the Age of Emancipation” in The Civil War and the Summer of 2020, eds. Hilary Green and Andrew Slap (Fordham University Press, 2024).

“‘There is No God in Heaven’: Black Religion, Resistance, and the Police Power in Jim Crow New Orleans,” co-authored with K. Stephen Prince, Journal of African American History 108 (spring 2023).

“The Notorious Bras Coupé: A Slave Revolt in Memory and Anxiety,” American Quarterly 72 (March 2020).

“Redefining Vagrancy: Policing Freedom and Disorder in Reconstruction New Orleans, 1862–1868,” Journal of Southern History 84 (February 2018).

 

Book

The Carceral City: Slavery and the Making of Mass Incarceration in New Orleans, 1803–1930 (University of North Carolina Press, 2024)