Marcus Rediker (born 1951 in Owensboro, Kentucky) is an American professor, historian, writer, and activist for a variety of peace and social justice causes. He graduated with a B.A. from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1976 and attended the University of Pennsylvania for graduate study, earning an M.A. and Ph.D. in history. He taught at Georgetown University from 1982 to 1994, lived in Moscow for a year (1984-5), and is currently Distinguished Professor of Atlantic History of the Department of History at the University of Pittsburgh.
Scholarship
Rediker has written several books on Atlantic social, labor, and maritime history. Informed by the Marxist critique of capitalism, they explore their respective subjects in systemic terms while emphasizing human class-consciousness and agency. In the introduction to Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, for example, he explains:
