EDUCATION
- MA and PhD in History and African American Studies, University of Wisconsin (Madison) (UW-Madison)
- B.A. in Anthropology and African and Afro-American Studies, Washington University (Saint Louis) (College Honors)
CURRENT EMPLOYMENT
- Curator of Collections and Exhibitions, Obama Presidential Center Museum, 2022-present
PREVIOUS POSITIONS
- Curator of African American History, Smithsonian National Museum of American History, 2019-2022
- Assistant Professor, Department of History, Macalester College, 2016-2019
- Assistant Professor, Department of History, Dickinson College, 2014-2016
- Postdoctoral Fellow, Consortium for Faculty Diversity, Dickinson College, 2013-2014
SCHOLARLY RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS (PRINT AND DIGITAL)
Book
- Continually Working: Black Women, Community Intellectualism, and Economic Justice in Postwar Milwaukee, Vanderbilt University Press, March 2023
Peer Reviewed Articles
- “ ‘Kept Right on Fightin…’: African American Working Women’s Activism in Civil Rights Era Milwaukee” Journal of Civil and Human Rights, 2:1
- “ ‘Fighting Their Own Economic Battles’: Saint Charles Lockett, Ethnic Enterprizes and the Challenges of Black Capitalism in 1970s Milwaukee.” Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society special issue on: Black Women’s Labor: Economics, Culture and Politics, 18:1
Invited Chapters in Peer-Reviewed Edited Collections
- “We’ve Been Behind the Scenes”: Fair Employment and Project Equality in 1970s Milwaukee,” in The Strange Careers of Jim Crow North edited by Jeanne Theoharis and Brian Purnell with Komozi Woodard (NYU Press, 2019).
Reviews and Other Publications
- Review: Jim Crow Capital, by Mary-Elizabeth Murphy, Journal of American Ethnic History, forthcoming 2020.
- Review: Gateway to Equality: Black Women and the Struggle for Economic Justice in St. Louis, by Keona Ervin, Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, Winter 2019, Volume 117. No. 1.
- Review: Cutting Along the Color Line: Black Barbers and Barber Shops in America, by Quincy T. Mills, Journal of American History, December 2014, Volume 101. No. 3.
- “Rosa Parks,” Icons of Black America. Edited by Matthew Whitaker (CT: Greenwood Press, 2011) p687-696.
- “Hattie McDaniel,” Icons of Black America. Edited by Matthew Whitaker (CT: Greenwood Press, 2011) p583-592.
SELECTED AWARDS, HONORS, FELLOWSHIPS AND GRANTS
- AWHI Programming Grant, 2021-2022
- Mellon Faculty Fellowship, Associated Colleges of the Midwest, 2016-2017
- 40 Under 40 Professor Who Inspires, NerdWallet, 2015
- Digital Humanities Faculty-Student Collaboration Grant, Dickinson College, Fall 2014
- Dean’s Conference Travel Fund Grant, Dickinson College, Fall 2014, Spring 2014
- Willoughby Fellowship for Teaching with Technology Program, Dickinson College, Summer 2014
- Research and Development Grant for Summer Research, Dickinson College, Summer 2014
- Consortium for Faculty Diversity Postdoctoral Fellowship, Dickinson College, 2013-2014
SELECTED RESEARCH PRESENTATIONS
- “Transgressive Pedagogical Possibilities in a National History Museum,” National Women’s Studies Association Annual Conference, November 2022
- “Anything to Get Out”: Black Women, Migration and Resistance in the Upper Midwest,” National Women’s Studies Association Annual Conference, November 2022
- “ReWORKing the Record: A Collections Plan for Black Business and Labor History at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History,” University of Maryland Anna Julia Cooper Workshop, April 2022
- “Old Collections, New Stories: African American Beauty History at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History” on the Gender and Collecting at the Smithsonian panel, American Historical Association Annual Conference, February 2022 (virtual)
- “New Directions in Curating African American Business History,” on the What Does Restorative Justice Look Like in an American History Museum? panel, American Historical Association Annual Conference, February 2022 (virtual)
- “Curators and Kin: The Bonding Work of African American Public History,” Roundtable presenter, Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) Annual Conference, September 2021
- Madam CJ Walker’s Gospel of Giving Authors Meet Critics Roundtable presenter, Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) Annual Conference, September 2021
- “From Margin to Center: Curatorial Intentionality in Reinterpreting the American Past,” Co-presenters; Fath Davis Ruffins, Modupe Labode, Tsione Wolde-Michael, Association of African American Museums, Virtual Annual Conference, August 2020
- “The Schools Are Not Teaching:” Welfare Rights Activism and Sites of Educational Justice in 1970s Milwaukee,” Co-panelists: Ari Eisenberg, Emma Amador, Annelise Orleck, Berkshire Conference of Women Historians (Big Berks), Johns Hopkins University, May 2020 (panel presentation canceled due to COVID-19)
- “A Blueprint for Economic Justice: Project Equality and Black Women’s Economic Activism in Milwaukee,” Historians of the Twentieth Century US, Cambridge, United Kingdom, June 2018
- “What the Mothers Have to Say:” Storytelling and Knowledge Production in the Milwaukee Welfare Rights Movement”, African American Intellectual History Society Annual Conference, Vanderbilt University, March 2017
- “We, my husband and I, were a team”: Negotiating the Economic Activism of Milwaukee’s Ardie and Wilbur Halyard, American Historical Association, 2017
AFFILIATIONS
- Association of Black Women Historians ABWH)
- Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH)
- Black Midwest Initiative (BMI)
- Organization of American Historians (OAH)
- African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS)
- American Historical Association (AHA)
- Midwestern History Association (MHA)
