Matthew Crow

Matthew Crow is Professor of History and Chair of both the History Department and the Law and Society program at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. He joined the faculty in 2012 after earning his Ph.D. from UCLA in 2011. His academic work bridges intellectual, constitutional, and environmental history, with a focus on the United States during the revolutionary and early republican periods.

• Ph.D., UCLA (2011)
• B.A., UCSD (2005)

His research centers on the intersections of law, literature, and history, particularly in how historical materials are used to argue about law and politics. Crow’s scholarship explores Thomas Jefferson’s legal and historical thought, the role of equity, and the legal pluralism evident in early American and oceanic contexts. He is especially interested in how historical narratives shape legal and political identities. His work also extends to Herman Melville’s writings as a lens into legal and literary history.

Crow’s publications reflect a deep engagement with interdisciplinary themes, including legal personhood, settler colonialism, and the environmental dimensions of legal thought. His book Thomas Jefferson, Legal History, and the Art of Recollection (Cambridge University Press, 2017) is a major contribution to understanding Jefferson’s archival practices and their implications for constitutional authority. His recent articles examine topics ranging from Melville’s legal imagination to Jefferson’s views on climate and commerce.

• "The Understory" (2021)
• "Jefferson's Whale" (2020)
• "Littoral Leviathan" (2020)
• "A Melvillean Moment" (2020)
• "Go Set a Watchman and Law" (2017)
• "Uses of Equity" (2015)

Crow has received no explicitly mentioned scientific awards in the provided text. He advises students through honors theses and seminars and has taught courses such as U.S. Constitutional History, the Age of Revolutions, and a seminar on Oceans, Laws, and Empires. He is also active in academic service, organizing the Central New York Early Modern Seminar and serving as a faculty athletic fellow for HWS Rowing.

He leads research initiatives on oceanic history and the legal-literary imagination, often connecting environmental history with constitutional thought. His future work continues to explore the ocean as a site of legal and historical formation.