Theodore Rosengarten (born December 17, 1944) is an American

historian A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the st ...

. He graduated from

Amherst College Amherst College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts. Founded in 1821 as an attempt to relocate Williams College by its then-president Zephaniah Swift Moore, Amherst is the third oldest institution of higher educati ...

in 1966 with a BA, and earned his

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from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...

with a dissertation on Ned Cobb (1885–1973), a former

Alabama (We dare defend our rights) , anthem = " Alabama" , image_map = Alabama in United States.svg , seat = Montgomery , LargestCity = Huntsville , LargestCounty = Baldwin County , LargestMetro = Greater Birmingham , area_total_km2 = 135,7 ...

tenant farmer A tenant farmer is a person (farmer or farmworker) who resides on land owned by a landlord. Tenant farming is an agricultural production system in which landowners contribute their land and often a measure of operating capital and management, ...

. Subsequently, he developed his interviews with Cobb as a kind of "autobiography", ''All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw'' (1974), which won the U.S.

National Book Award The National Book Awards are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors. The Nat ...

in category Contemporary Affairs."National Book Awards – 1975"

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. Retrieved 2012-03-09.
There was a "Contemporary" or "Current" award category from 1972 to 1980. About fifteen years later, ''All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw'' was adapted and produced as a one-man play starring

Cleavon Little Cleavon Jake Little (June 1, 1939 – October 22, 1992) was an American stage, film, and television actor. He began his career in the late 1960s on the stage. In 1970, he starred in the Broadway production of '' Purlie'', for which he earned both ...

at the Lamb's Theater in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

."Review/Theater; Out of the Old South, the Words of a Witness"
''The New York Times'', Frank Rich, October 23, 1989

Awards

* 1989

MacArthur Fellows Program The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and commonly but unofficially known as the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation typically to between 20 and 30 indi ...

Works

''All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw''
Knopf, 1974, *''Tombee: Portrait of a Cotton Planter'', Authors Theodore Rosengarten, Thomas Benjamin Chaplin, Editor Susan W. Walker, Morrow, 1986, *''Land of Deepest Shade: Photographs of the South'', authors Theodore Rosengarten, Photographs John McWilliams, High Museum of Art, 1989,
"A Portion of the People: Three Hundred Years of Southern Jewish Life"
Editors Theodore Rosengarten, Dale Rosengarten, University of South Carolina Press, 2002, *''Grass Roots: African Origins of an American Art'', Authors Dale Rosengarten, Theodore Rosengarten, Enid Schildkrout, Judith Ann Carney, Museum for African Art, 2008,

References

External links

"The Hem of My Garment: An Interview with Theodore Rosengarten about the Making of "Nate Shaw""
George Abbott White and Theodore Rosengarten, ''The Massachusetts Review'', Vol. 21, No. 4 (Winter, 1980), pp. 787–800 21st-century American historians 21st-century American male writers Living people 1944 births Harvard University alumni MacArthur Fellows National Book Award winners Amherst College alumni American male non-fiction writers {{US-historian-stub