Erica Armstrong Dunbar is an American historian at Rutgers University. She is a distinguished Charles and Mary Beard Professor of History at Rutgers. An historian of African American women and the antebellum United States, Dunbar is the author of A Fragile Freedom: African American Women and Emancipation in the Antebellum City (2008) and Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge (2017). Never Caught was a National Book Award for Nonfiction finalist and winner of the Frederick Douglass Prize.
Erica Armstrong Dunbar | |
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Author at the 2018 U.S. National Book Festival | |
Nationality | American |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University |
Academic work | |
Discipline | History |
Institutions | Rutgers University |
Life
editDr.Dunbar attended college at the University of Pennsylvania, then earned an M.A. and Ph.D from Columbia University. She taught at the University of Delaware[1] before joining Rutgers University in 2017.[2] She is Charles and Mary Beard Professor of History at Rutgers. Her research and teaching focus on the history of African American women and late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth-century United States history.[2]
Her first book was A Fragile Freedom: African American Women and Emancipation in the Antebellum City, published by Yale University Press in 2008.[3] In it she examines the lives black women made in Philadelphia’s large free black community, using documents like friendship albums and personal correspondence, church records, and labor contracts.[4]
In 2017 she published Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge.[5][6][7][8][9] Never Caught was a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award for nonfiction.[10] In November 2018 Dunbar was named joint winner of the Frederick Douglass Prize for Never Caught.[11]
Works
edit- A Fragile Freedom: African American Women and Emancipation in the Antebellum City (Yale University Press, 2008) ISBN 9780300177022, OCLC 816818622
- Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge (Atria/37 Ink, February 2017) ISBN 9781501126413, OCLC 1019993773
- The Politics of History: A New Generation of American Historians Writes Back with Jim Downs, Timothy Patrick McCarthy, and T.K. Hunter (in progress)
References
edit- ^ Damsker, Mat (February 20, 2017). "A slave's flight from our first president". USA TODAY. Retrieved 5 October 2017.
- ^ a b Walcott-Shepherd, Candace. "Dunbar, Erica Armstrong". history.rutgers.edu. Retrieved 2017-10-05.
- ^ Rael, Patrick (2008-12-01). "A Fragile Freedom: African American Women and Emancipation in the Antebellum City". The American Historical Review. 113 (5): 1535–1536. doi:10.1086/ahr.113.5.1535. ISSN 0002-8762.
- ^ Reynolds, Rita (2011). "Review of A Fragile Freedom: African American Women and Emancipation in the Antebellum City". Journal of the Early Republic. 31 (2): 322–324. doi:10.1353/jer.2011.0018. JSTOR 41261616. S2CID 144310779.
- ^ Melamed, Samantha (February 7, 2017). "Meet the slave who escaped from George Washington's Philly mansion and was never caught". Philadelphia Inquirer. Retrieved 5 October 2017.
- ^ Schuessler, Jennifer (6 February 2017). "In Search of the Slave Who Defied George Washington". The New York Times. Retrieved 5 October 2017.
- ^ Baker, Peter C. (January 19, 2017). "A Review of Erica Armstrong Dunbar's Never Caught". Pacific Standard. Retrieved 2017-10-05.
- ^ Lozada, Lucas Iberico (March 3, 2017). "Erica Armstrong Dunbar Talks Never Caught, the True Story of George Washington's Runaway Slave". Paste. Retrieved 2017-10-05.
- ^ "NEVER CAUGHT Ona Judge, the Washingtons, and the Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave by Erica Armstrong Dunbar". Kirkus Reviews. November 23, 2016. Retrieved October 5, 2017.
- ^ "2017 National Book Award finalists revealed". CBS News. October 4, 2017. Retrieved 2017-10-04.
- ^ "Rutgers, Harvard professors share 20th annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize". YaleNews. 2018-11-19. Retrieved 2018-11-20.
External links
edit- Interview with Dunbar in Richmond Magazine, April 21, 2017