Roberto Saba is a historian of the nineteenth-century United States. He approaches the subject from transnational and comparative perspectives. His research and teaching focus on capitalism, imperialism, and slavery. He is also interested in the histories of immigration, popular culture, and travel.   

His forthcoming book—American Mirror: The United States and Brazil in the Age of Emancipation (Princeton University Press, 2021)—investigates how American and Brazilian reformers worked together to ensure that slave emancipation would advance the interests of capital. He has also published a study of Confederate migration to Brazil in Traversea: Journal of Transatlantic History.