Study Black Women's History in Online MA Summer Course with Professor Kellie Carter Jackson of Wellesley College

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and Pace University are pleased to announce that registration for Summer 2020 courses is open for the online Master of Arts in American History Program. We highlight here one of the six courses offered in the coming semester.

Black Women’s History

This course focuses on African American women’s history in the United States with certain aspects of black women’s activism and leadership covered within the African Diaspora. We will examine ways in which these women engaged in local, national, and international freedom struggles while simultaneously defining their identities as wives, mothers, leaders, citizens, and workers. The course will pay special attention to the diversity of black women’s experiences and to the dominant images of black women from Mumbet (the first enslaved black woman to sue for her freedom and win) to contemporary issues of race, sex, and class in the Age of (Michelle) Obama. Participants will explore such questions as: What is black women’s history? How does black women’s history add to our understanding of American history? Where should black women’s history go from here?

Register for Black Women’s History here. 

Knafel Assistant Professor of Humanities and Assistant Professor of Africana Studies Kellie Carter Jackson is a nineteenth-century historian whose book, Force & Freedom: Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence (University of Pennsylvania Press), examines the conditions that led some black abolitionists to believe slavery might only be abolished by violent force. Carter Jackson is co-editor of Reconsidering Roots: Race, Politics, & Memory (University of Georgia Press). She also co-edited a special issue on the 40th Anniversary of Roots for Transition Magazine (Issue 122}. She was featured in the History Channel's documentary Roots: A History Revealed, which was nominated for an NAACP Image Award in 2016.