Seth Kotch

Seth Kotch is an Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, affiliated with the College of Arts and Sciences, Department of American Studies and History. He holds a Ph.D. in History from UNC (2009) and a B.A. from Columbia University (2001). His research focuses on modern American history, particularly the social history of criminal justice, with a specialization in the death penalty’s role in North Carolina’s Jim Crow era.

His book Lethal State (2019) examines the death penalty’s evolution in North Carolina, linking it to racial hierarchies and state-building. Kotch leads digital projects like A Red Record (lynching history) and the LDF Oral History Project (NAACP civil rights advocacy). He co-led the Media and the Movement project (NEH-funded) on civil rights-era journalism and directed the Civil Rights History Project with the Smithsonian.

Teaching includes courses on American Studies, digital humanities, and criminal justice history, with prison-based classes at Warren and Johnston Correctional Institutions. He has advised projects on the death penalty, racial justice, and Southern history. No explicit awards are noted, but his work is widely cited in legal and historical scholarship.