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Michele Mitchell Associate Professor of History Northwestern University, Ph.D, 1998 Email:

Areas of Research/Interest: Gender and sexuality, U.S. history (1860-1940), African American, African diaspora, nationalism and feminist theory. Also interested in slavery and emancipation, intellectual and social histories, history of medicine, West/East/South Africa, Brazil and film theory.

Fellowships/Honors: North American Co-Editor of Gender & History (2005-2008); Schomburg Center & National Endowment for the Humanities Scholar-in-Residence, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, 2001– 2002; J. Franklin Jameson Fellowship Award, American Historical Association & the Library of Congress, 2001– 2002 (Declined); Fellow, Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis, 1997 – 1998; Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, 1996 – 1997; Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellow, 1996 – 1997 (Declined); Huggins-Quarles Award, Organization of American Historians, 1996; Pre-Doctoral Fellow, The Carter G. Woodson Institute for Afro-American and African Studies, University of Virginia, 1994 – 1996; Field Researcher (Louisiana), “Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South,” Center for Documentary Studies, Duke University, 1994; Researcher, Martin Luther King, Jr., Papers Project, Stanford University, 1991.

Select Publications:

Righteous Propagation:  African Americans and the Politics of Racial Destiny after Reconstruction (Chapel Hill & London:  University of North Carolina Press, 2004).

Dialogues of Dispersal: Gender, Sexuality, and African Diasporas, co-edited with Sandra Gunning and Tera W. Hunter (Oxford & Malden, MA:  Blackwell Publishing, 2004).  Also published as a special issue of Gender & History, 15:3 (November 2003).

Introduction, "Gender, Sexuality, and African Diasporas," co-authored with Gunning and Hunter, in Dialogues of Dispersal, pp. 1-12;  Gender & History 15:3 (November 2003):  397-408.

"Practising Gender History," editorial co-authored with Karen Adler and Ross Balzaretti, Gender & History 20:1 (April 2008): 1-7.

"'Lower Orders,' Racial Hierarchies, and Rights Rhetoric: Evolutionary Echoes in Elizabeth Cady Stanton's Thought during the late 1860s," in Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Feminist as Thinker: A Reader in Documents and Essays, ed. Ellen Carol DuBois and Richard Cándida Smith (New York: New York University Press, 2007).

Comment on Fernando Martínez Heredia's "Nationalisms, Races, and Classes in the Revolution of 1895 and the Cuban First Republic," Cuban Studies 33 (2002): 124-128.

Exhibit review, "Of the People: The African American Experience," Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History (Detroit, Michigan), The Public Historian 23:2 (Spring 2001), pp. 124-126.

"Silences Broken, Silences Kept:  Gender & Sexuality in African-American History," Gender & History 11:3 (November 1999), pp. 433-444. Also published in Gender & History: Retrospect and Prospect, ed. Leonore Davidoff, Keith McClelland, and Eleni Varikas (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 2000), pp. 15-26.  Translated as "Silences maintenus et secrets rompus: genre et sexualité dans l'histoire africaine-américaine" (trans. Anne Hugon), Clio:  Histoire, Femmes, et Sociétés 16 (2002):  271-291.

"'The Black Man's Burden':  African Americans, Imperialism, and Notions of Racial Manhood, 1890-1910," International Review of Social History Supplement 44:4 (1999), pp. 77-99.  Simultaneously published in Complicating Categories: Gender, Class, Race and Ethnicity, ed. Eileen Boris and Angelique Janssens (Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 77-99.

Published Fieldwork:

Interviews with Delores Thompson Aaron, Jessie Lee Chassion, and Brenda Bozant Davillier in Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell About Life in the Segregated South, A Book-and-CD Set, ed. William H. Chafe, Raymond Gavins, and Robert Korstad with Paul Oritz, Robert Parrish, Jennifer Ritterhouse, Keisha Roberts, and Nicole Waligora-Davis (New York: The New Press, 2001).

Excerpt of interview with Jessie Lee Chassion available on "Voices from Behind the Veil:  Selections from the Center for Documentary Studies" (disc two, track three);  produced by Stephen Smith of American Radio Works in collaboration with the Behind the Veil Project, Center for Documentary Studies, Duke University.

Current Projects:

Idle Anxieties: Race, Gender, and Idleness during the Great Depression (monograph;  in process).

Connexions: Histories of Race and Sex in North America (anthology co-edited with Jennifer Morgan and Jennifer Brier;  in process).

"The Body as Archive: African Americans and Taxonomies of 'Miscegenation'" (tentative title);  article in process.

Selected Consulting:

"America I Am:  The African-American Imprint" (touring museum exhibition; John Fleming, Executive Producer; Fath Davis Ruffins, National Curator)

"A Dream Deferred" (Program 4), course installment for "Transforming America:  U.S. History Since 1877," PBS Adult Learning Service & Annenberg/CPB.  Producer: Dallas Telelearning. Preview Airdate:  February 17, 2005.  Release date: Fall 2005.

"Marcus Garvey:  Look for Me in the Whirlwind" (documentary);  American Experience (PBS). Produced and Directed by Stanley Nelson;  Associate Producer, Gwendolyn D. Dixon;  written by Marcia Smith;  Executive Consultant, Robert Hill.  First Airdate:  February 12, 2001.

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