After working as a public radio journalist and documentary producer, he received his doctorate in United States history from Emory University in 1995, specializing in American intellectual and religious history. His work on the education of Laura Bridgman was awarded the Sidney E. Mead Prize by the American Society of Church History, and has been supported by research grants from the Spencer Foundation in Chicago. In addition, he is currently researching and writing about the early history of education for the blind in the United States, and the cultural history of blindness in the nineteenth century. Freeberg serves on the editorial board of the History of Education Quarterly.