Genovese lahir pada 19 Mei 1930, di Brooklyn, New York.[2] Ayahnya adalah seorang pekerja pelabuhan imigran dan Eugene dibesarkan di keluarga kelas pekerja Italia-Amerika.[3]
Pada tahun 1945, pada usia 15 tahun, ia bergabung dengan Partai Komunis AS,[3] dan aktif dalam gerakan pemuda hingga ia dikeluarkan pada tahun 1950, pada usia 20 tahun, karena mengabaikan disiplin partai[3] atau, sebagaimana ia berkata, "karena telah melakukan zig padahal [dia] seharusnya melakukan zag".[5][6] Ia memperoleh gelar Bachelor of Arts dari Universitas Brooklyn pada tahun 1953 dan Master of Arts pada tahun 1955 dan gelar Ph.D. dalam sejarah pada tahun 1959, keduanya dari Universitas Columbia.[7] Dia mengajar di selusin universitas lain, termasuk Yale, Cambridge dan Rutgers.[7]
Ia kemudian diberhentikan dari dinas militer karena kecenderungan komunisnya.[3]
Karya
Genovese, Eugene D. (1965), The Political Economy of Slavery: Studies in the Economy and the Society of the Slave South, Middletown, Connecticut: Weslayan University Press. Second Edition.
Genovese, E. D. (1968), "Materialism and Idealism in the History of Negro Slavery in the Americas", Journal of Social History, 1 (4): 371–94, doi:10.1353/jsh/1.4.371, ISSN0022-4529
Genovese, Eugene D. (1971), In Red and Black: Marxian Explorations in Southern and Afro-American History
The World the Slaveholders Made: Two Essays in Interpretation, 1969
Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made, 1974 Winner of the Bancroft Prize in History.
Fox-Genovese, E.; Genovese, E.D. (1976), "The Political Crisis of Social History: A Marxian Perspective", Journal of Social History, 10 (2): 205–220, doi:10.1353/jsh/10.2.205 (with Elizabeth Fox-Genovese)
From Rebellion to Revolution: Afro-American Slave Revolts in the Making of the Modern World, 1979
Fruits of Merchant Capital: Slavery and Bourgeois Property in the Rise and Expansion of Capitalism, 1983 (With Elizabeth Fox-Genovese)
The Slaveholders' Dilemma: Freedom and Progress in Southern Conservative Thought, 1820–1860, 1992
The Southern Tradition: The Achievement and Limitations of an American Conservatism, 1994
The Southern Front: History and Politics in the Cultural War, 1995
A Consuming Fire: The Fall of the Confederacy in the Mind of the White Christian South, Mercer University Lamar Memorial Lectures, 1998
The Mind of the Master Class: History and Faith in the Southern Slaveholders' Worldview, 2005 (with Elizabeth Fox-Genovese)
Miss Betsey: A Memoir of Marriage, 2008
Slavery in White and Black: Class and Race in the Southern Slaveholders' New World Order, 2008.
Fatal Self-Deception: Slaveholding Paternalism in the Old South, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011 (with Elizabeth Fox-Genovese)
The Sweetness of Life: Southern Planters at Home, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017 (edited by Douglas Ambrose)
Baca, George. (2012). "Eugene Genovese and a Dialectical Anthropology." Dialectical Anthropology, 36:245-262. online
Boles, John; Nolen, Elelyn Thomas, ed. (1987), Interpreting Southern History: Historiographical Essays in Honour of Sanford W. Higginbotham, Louisiana State University Press.
Davis, David Brion (October 5, 1995), "Southern Comfort", The New York Review of Books: 43–46.
——— (2001), In the Image of God: Religion, Moral Values, and Our Heritage of Slavery, hlm.110–20.
King, Richard H; Genovese, Eugene (1977), "Marxism and the Slave South: a Review Essay", American Quarterly, 29 (1): 117–31, doi:10.2307/2712264, ISSN0003-0678, JSTOR2712264; full text in Jstor.
Linden, Adrianus Arnoldus Maria van der (1994), A Revolt Against Liberalism: American Radical Historians, 1959–1976, hlm.167–220.
Livingston, James (2004), "Marxism' and the Politics of History: Reflections on the Work of Eugene D. Genovese", Radical History Review (88): 133–53 online.
Meier, August; Elliott, Rudwirck (1986), Black History and the Historical Profession, 1915–1980, University of Illinois Press.
Parish, Peter (1989), Slavery: History and Historians, New York: Harper.
Radosh, Ronald (1978), "Eugene Genovese: the Rise of a Marxist Historian", Change (interview), 10 (10): 31–35, doi:10.1080/00091383.1978.10569535, ISSN0009-1383, Genovese, the first Marxist to be elected President of the Organization of American Historians, discusses Marxism's changing status on American campuses, and traces his career from his membership in the Communist youth movement to his becoming History Department Chairman at the University of Rochester.
Roper, John Herbert (1996), "Marxing through Georgia: Eugene Genovese and Radical Historiography for the Region", Georgia Historical Quarterly, 80: 77–92. online
Shalhope, Robert E (July 1970), "Eugene Genovese, the Missouri Elite and Civil War Historiography", Bulletin of the Missouri Historical Society, 26: 271–82.
Shapiro, Herbert (1982), "Eugene Genovese, Marxism, and the Study of Slavery", Journal of Ethnic Studies, 9 (4): 87–100, ISSN0091-3219, The work of Eugene Genovese is widely perceived within and beyond the historical profession as a product of creative Marxist scholarship, especially now that his Roll, Jordan, Roll has become for many reviewers "a definitive benchmark in the historiography of slavery." A close analysis of works such as The Political Economy of Slavery shows his greatest lacunae: the minimizing of the significance of black struggle and the magnifying of whatever elements of passivity can be found among blacks insofar as they actively participated in the Civil War. Accommodation and the plantation as community are overdone themes. online
Stampp, Kenneth M (1970), "Interpreting the Slaveholders' World: a Review", Agricultural History, 44 (4): 407–12, ISSN0002-1482. online
Steirer, William F (1974), "Eugene D. Genovese: Marxist-Romantic Historian of the South", Southern Review, 10: 840–50. online
