Below is an abbreviated curriculum vitae. If you prefer a pdf version, you can download a short or full c.v. here as well.
Education
Ph.D., History, University of Virginia, May 2004
M.A., History, University of Virginia, August 1999
B.A., Yale University, magna cum laude, history major with distinction, May 1998
Employment
2014–present, Daniel M. Lyons Professor and Associate Professor of American History, Department of History, Brooklyn College, CUNY
2019–present, Affiliated Faculty, History Program, Graduate Center, CUNY
2006–2014, Associate and Assistant Professor, Department of History, Tufts University
2004–2006, Lecturer in American History, School of History and Classics, University of Edinburgh
Publications
Books
2023, The Great New York Fire of 1776: A Lost Story of the American Revolution, Yale University Press; audiobook edition, Tantor Media, under contract
2010, Defiance of the Patriots: The Boston Tea Party and the Making of America, Yale University Press, 2010; History Book Club, featured selection; Chinese ed., Shanghai People’s Publishing House, under contract; Audiobook edition, Tantor Media, 2019
2007, Rebels Rising: Cities and the American Revolution, Oxford University Press, 2007; History Book Club, alternate selection
Edited Volume
2014, Major Problems in the Era of the American Revolution, 1760–1791: Documents and Essays, with Richard D. Brown, 3rd edition, Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2014
Articles
2022, “Introduction to Papers Given at the 2020 Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association” and “Conclusion,” in “Decentering Early New York City’s History,” New York History 103, 1 (summer 2022): 1–3, 36–38
2017, “‘Fix’d almost amongst Strangers’: Charleston’s Quaker Merchants and the Limits of Cosmopolitanism,” William and Mary Quarterly 74, 1 (Jan. 2017): 77–108
2012, “Did Dutch Smugglers Provoke the Boston Tea Party?” Early American Studies (Special Issue: Anglo-Dutch Revolutions) 10, 2 (spring 2012): 335–59
2006, “The Night the Yankees Burned Broadway: The New York City Fire of 1776,” Early American Studies 4, 2 (fall 2006): 471–511
2002, “Nations of American Rebels: Understanding Nationalism in Revolutionary North America and the Civil War South,” Civil War History 48, 1 (March 2002): 5–33
2001, “Fire of Liberty: Firefighters, Urban Voluntary Culture, and the Revolutionary Movement,” William and Mary Quarterly 58, 4 (Oct. 2001): 781–818
Volume Essays
2023, “An Incendiary War: Conspiracies, Disasters, and the American Revolution, 1775–1790,” in Rethinking American Disasters: New Essays in Cultural, Political, and Environmental History, ed. Cynthia A. Kierner, Matthew Mulcahy, and Liz Skilton (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2023)
2023, “Insurgency and War,” The Cambridge History of the American Revolution, vol. 2, ed. Marjoleine Kars, Andrew M. Schocket, Michael A. McDonnell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; essay commissioned, submitted, revised, and accepted)
2022, “‘The First Incendiary’: A Female Firebrand and the New York City Fire of 1776,” in Women Waging War in the American Revolution, ed. Holly A. Mayer (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2022)
2019, “Jefferson’s Embargo: National Intent and Sectional Effects,” in Jeffersonians in Power: The Rhetoric of Opposition Meets the Realities of Governing, ed. Joanne B. Freeman and Johann N. Neem (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2019)
2018, “‘Disreputable among civilized Nations’: Destroying Homes during the Revolutionary War,” in Justifying Revolution: Law, Virtue, and Violence in the American War of Independence, ed. Glenn Moots and Philip Hamilton (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2018)
2016, “‘The Unpleasing Part of the Drama’: Fear, Devastation, and the Civilian Experience of the Revolutionary War,” in Fear and the Shaping of Early American Societies, ed. Lauric Henneton and L. H. Roper (Leiden: Brill, 2016)
2011, “Franklin and the Coming of the American Revolution,” in A Companion to Benjamin Franklin, ed. David Waldstreicher (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011)
2009,“Changing Our Habitation: Henry Laurens, Rattray Green, and the Revolutionary Movement in Charleston’s Domestic Spaces,” in Material Culture in Anglo-America: Regional Identity and Urbanity in the Tidewater, Lowcountry, and Caribbean, ed. David Shields (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2009)
Media
Writings
2023, “New York City’s Forgotten Disaster: The Great New York Fire of 1776 Was a Key Part of the Revolution,” New York Daily News
2023, “We’re Not Doing Enough for Grad Students at Conferences,” Chronicle of Higher Education
2023, “What If...The Continental Army Had Not Escaped after the Battle of Long Island?” with Nige Tassell, BBC History Revealed
2023, “David Grim’s Fairy Tale: The New York City Fire in Myth,” Gotham: A Blog for Scholars of New York City History
2023, “Two Encounters: Captain Abraham Van Dyck, the "Negro Man," and Prince Pitkin,” Journal of the American Revolution
2023, “Burning Pitch: Telling a New Story of 1776,” Yale University Press Blog
2022, “Mythmaking in Manhattan: Stories of 1776 and Santa Claus,” Age of Revolutions
2022, “America’s Road to Revolution,” BBC History Revealed
2021, “A New Low for US Democracy,” BBC History Magazine
2018, “Declaring Independence,” in Carol Berkin, ed., Revisiting the Founding Era: Readings from the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
2017, “On Forgetting History,” part of a three-part feature on “What Are the Spectres that Continue to Haunt the US?” BBC World Histories
2017, “World Wide Enough: Historiography, Imagination, and Stagecraft,” in “Symposium on Hamilton, An American Musical,” Journal of the Early Republic
2016, “The ‘Paradox’ Paradox,” Process: A Blog for American History
2016, “Ten Days that Made a Nation,” BBC History Magazine
2015, co-author, “Ask the Author: Still a Prologue? The Stamp Act Protests at 250,” Common-place 16, 1
2015, “Evacuation Day: Marking the End of the Revolutionary War,” We’re History
2015, “Tempests and Teapots: Sexual Politics and Tea-Drinking in the Early Modern World,” Notches: (Re)Marks on the History of Sexuality
2014, “A Mother’s Milk or Another Mother’s Milk: Colonial Debates on Breast Feeding,” Colonial Williamsburg Magazine
2013, “Seven Myths about the Boston Tea Party,” Journal of the American Revolution
2013, “Walking the Streets of the Revolutionary City,” Journal of the American Revolution
2013, “Separated by a Common History: North and South in Colonial Times,” Colonial Williamsburg Magazine
2012, “Terms of Estrangement: Who Were the Sons of Liberty?” Colonial Williamsburg Magazine
2011, “La Boston Tea Party, modèle pour les insoumis,” Alternatives Internationales
2010, “A Global Tea Party,” BBC History Magazine
2010, “Noble Patriots or Glorified Vandals?” Wall Street Journal
2009, “Preserving the Library in the Digital Age,” The Readex Report
2009, “The Tea Party’s Appeal Across the Political Spectrum,” History News Network
2009, “Nice Party, But Not So Revolutionary,” Washington Post, Outlook section
Appearances
2023, “The Boston Tea Party,” A Short History of… podcast, Noiser Podcasts
2023, “The Great New York City Fire of 1776,” Unsung History podcast, with Kelly Therese Pollock
2023, “CBS News July 4th Holiday Special 2023, Hour 3,” hosted by Gil Gross, executive producer Paul Woodhull
2023, “Taxes and the American Revolution: A Chat with Benjamin Carp,” Tax Chats podcast, with Scott Dyreng and Jeffrey L. Hoopes
2023, “Did George Washington Burn Down NYC?: Professor Benjamin Carp,” Our Professor Podcast, with Micah Sander and Carter Greene
2023, “American Revolution – Did Washington burn New York City?” War Books Podcast, with A. J. Woodhams
2023, “Benjamin L. Carp: Captain Abraham Van Dyck,” Dispatches: The Podcast of the Journal of the American Revolution, with Brady J. Crytzer
2023, “The Aftermath: The 1776 Great Fire of New York,” The Alarmist (podcast), with Rebecca Delgado Smith
2023, “Women Waging War in the American Revolution,” panel participant at the American Revolution Institute of the Society of the Cincinnati, broadcast on American History TV, C-SPAN3
2022, “The Aftermath: The Boston Tea Party,” The Alarmist (podcast), with Rebecca Delgado Smith
2022, “The American Revolutionary War: everything you wanted to know,” History Extra Podcast, with Elinor Evans
2021, “New York Burning, 1776, with Benjamin L. Carp,” Revolution 250 Podcast, with Robert J. Allison
2016, “History and Hamilton the Musical,” roundtable participant at the Society for Historians of the American Revolution, broadcast on American History TV, C-SPAN3
2015, “Revolutionary War: Military Aspects,” undergraduate lesson, broadcast on American History TV, C-SPAN3
2014, “Taverns in Pre-Revolutionary New York City,” Fraunces Tavern Museum, New York, broadcast on American History TV, C-SPAN3
2012, Author interview on Defiance of the Patriots, by Faith Middleton, The Faith Middleton Show, Connecticut Public Radio, WNPR FM 90.5
2010, Author talk, Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Boston, Dec. 2010, broadcast on American History TV, C-SPAN3
2010, Author talk, David Library of the American Revolution, Washington Crossing, PA, broadcast on Book TV, C-SPAN2
2010, Author interview on Defiance of the Patriots, by David Inge, Focus, Illinois Public Media, WILL AM 580
2010, Guest Scholar, “Teed Off: The Tea Party, Then and Now” (podcast), BackStory with the American History Guys, Virginia Foundation for the Humanities
Other television: Michael Portillo’s Hidden History of the Empire; Legends & Lies: The Patriots; Victoria Wood’s Nice Cup of Tea; How Booze Built America