Register
Coffee will be served at 11:30am. The event will start at 11:45am followed by a reception with discussion participants.
Speaker
Dr. Keisha N. Blain, a 2022 Guggenheim Fellow and Class of 2022 Carnegie Fellow, is one of the most innovative and influential young historians of her generation. She is an award-winning historian of the 20th century United States with broad interests and specializations in African American History, the modern African Diaspora, and Women’s and Gender Studies. She completed a Ph.D. in History from Princeton University in 2014.
She is a Full Professor of History and Africana Studies at Brown University and an affiliated faculty member in American Studies and in the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Studies. A former columnist for MSNBC, she is now the editor-in-chief of Global Black Thought, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press. The journal features original, innovative, and thoroughly researched essays on Black ideas, theories, and intellectuals in the United States and throughout the African diaspora.
Her most recent book is Without Fear: Black Women and the Making of Human Rights, which tells how, during American history, Black women made humans rights theirs: from worldwide travel and public advocacy in the global Black press to their work for the United Nations, they courageously and effectively moved human rights beyond an esoteric concept to an active, organizing principle. Acclaimed historian Keisha N. Blain tells the story of these women―from the well-known, like Ida B. Wells, Madam C. J. Walker, and Lena Horne, to those who are still less known, including Pearl Sherrod, Aretha McKinley, and Marguerite Cartwright. Blain captures human rights thinking and activism from the ground up with Black women at the center, working outside the traditional halls of power. By shouldering intersecting forms of oppression―including racism, sexism, and classism―Black women have long been in a unique position to fight for freedom and dignity. Without Fear is an account of their aspirations, strategies, and struggles to pioneer a human rights approach to combating systems of injustice.
About the International History Seminar
If you are interested in attending this semester’s events and joining the International History Seminar, please send an email confirming your interest to the Hayes Chair Graduate Research Associate, Ian Gammon, at hayeschairgra@osu.edu, and you will be included on the mailing list going forward. Materials will only be pre-circulated to people on the mailing list.
