Catie Peters
I am a writer, teacher, and researcher currently finishing my first book, Laboring Neighbors: Afro-Asian Ecologies in the Colonial Caribbean.
I hold a PhD in American Studies from Harvard University.
I am an American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Fellow. I previously held postdoctoral positions at the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Tufts University, and Yale University.
I have taught courses in American Studies and Caribbean Studies spanning from 1800 to the present. My pedagogy centers on interpreting the past with concern for equity in the present.
I am a lifelong student of Spanish and French as well as, over the past decade, Hindi and Mandarin.
Publications
Books
Laboring Neighbors: Afro-Asian Ecologies in the Colonial Caribbean, under advance contract with the Omohundro Institute/UNC Press.
Peer Reviewed Journal Articles
“Climate Reparations in the Caribbean,” under preparation for Slavery & Abolition.
2026 “Kan Gao, Chinois de Cayenne,” Journal of Indentureship and Its Legacies, submitted.
2026 “Digging and a Willingness to Dig: Gendered Labor, Grassroots Organizing, and Climate Change in Coastal Guyana,” Environmental Humanities, forthcoming.
2022 “‘The Greatest Attributes of Freedom’: Water, Kinship, and the Village Movement in Colonial Guyana,” Journal of Caribbean History 56, no. 1: 24–57.
2022 “Imperatives, Impossibilities, and Intimacies in the Imperial Archive: Chinese Men and Women of Colour in Early Nineteenth-Century Trinidad,” Eighteenth-Century Fiction 34, no. 2: 187–206.
2015 “The Two Locals: Food, Agri(culture), and Identity in Central Wisconsin,” Graduate Journal of Food Studies 2, no. 1: 4–18.
Book Chapters
2024 “Breathing Freedom in the Era of the Haitian Revolution,” in The Cambridge Companion to Romanticism and Race, ed. Manu Samriti Chander (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 22–36.
Book Reviews
2026 “Painting US Empire: Nineteenth-Century Art and Its Legacies by Maggie M. Cao,” Journal of Transnational American Studies, forthcoming.
2026 “The First Asians in the Americas: A Transpacific History by Diego Javier Luis,” William & Mary Quarterly, 83, no. 1: 198–203.
2024 “Book of the Little Axe: A Novel by Lauren Francis-Sharma,” sx salon: a small axe literary platform 47.
2022 “Blood on the River: A Chronicle of Mutiny and Freedom on the Wild Coast by Marjoleine Kars,” Journal of Early American History 12, no. 2–3: 1–4.
2022 “An Archive of Taste: Race and Eating in the Early United States by Lauren Klein,” Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature and the Arts 64, no. 1: 111–114.
2020 “The Natural History of Sexuality in Early America by Greta LaFleur,” Environmental History 25, no. 2: 415–417.
2017 “Persistent Progressives: The Rocky Mountain Farmers Union by John F. Freeman,” Environmental History 22, no. 1: 163–165.
Non-Peer Reviewed Articles
2021 “Your Mirada. Gracias. Siempre: Afro-Asia, Intimacies, and Women-of-Color Feminisms,” Kalfou: A Journal of Comparative and Relational Ethnic Studies 7, no. 2: 271–277.
Online Publications
2023 “Smoke and Plastic: Feeling the Environmental Past,” Environmental History Now.
2023 “Haitian Independence and the Chinese Caribbean Diaspora,” Latin American Diaries Blog, Centre for Latin American & Caribbean Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London.
2019 “Let’s Refocus,” From the Co-Editors, Graduate Journal of Food Studies 6, no. 1.
2018 “The Politics of Citation in the Field of Food Studies,” From the Editor, Graduate Journal of Food Studies 5, no. 2.
2018 “We Need to Talk About Empire,” From the Editor, Graduate Journal of Food Studies 5, no. 1.
Academic Editing
I have over ten years’ experience editing academic articles, chapters dissertations, and book manuscript materials. I have published in the fields of history, environmental studies, literary studies, and cultural studies. Please get in touch if you would like to work with me.
Dissertation Editing and Visioning
I help you complete your dissertation by ensuring it is edited and revised in the best shape possible. I also review your work for possible next steps based upon your goals and needs. In conversation with you, I provide options for publication, whether it makes the most sense for you to publish a strong article out of your dissertation, to be work on a book, and/or to reach a key audience with your findings. My objective is to ensure that you feel your work continues to have a path forward no matter the constraints you face.
Article/Project Development Coach
I support you at critical junctures in your project from idea inception to final publication. I help you develop a plan to move through your writing project, and I keep you accountable throughout the process.