Alumni
The W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies is a vibrant center of intellectual productivity and interdisciplinary teaching and research. But because of the statewide and nationwide budget crisis, we are threatened with severe losses in state funding. Please help us preserve our capacity to continue providing our students with excellent education. Your contributions will help us offer scholarships and social events, and host visits by internationally renowned scholars. If you have made contributions to the Department in the past, thank you again. For those who have not, please contribute now to help the Du Bois Department continue its tradition of excellence during this period of economic crisis.
Information for graduates of the Du Bois Department
If you were a graduate or undergraduate student in the UMass Amherst Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies, please email Tricia Loveland to update your alumni profile in our Graduate Alumni Directory. Also we have created a Facebook page for alumni and current students to network (see below). Stay connected to UMass and support the Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies.
Dissertation committees may unanimously award students with a distinction for their doctoral work. All dissertations earning a distinction during the defense are automatically nominated for the annual Esther M. Terry Award for the most outstanding dissertation.
Ph.D. Alumni
2018
Evan Howard Ashford successfully defended his dissertation entitled, "The Privilege of Blackness: Black Empowerment and the Fight for Liberation in Attala County, Mississippi 1865-1915" on June 29, 2018.
Peter Blackmer successfully defended his dissertation entitled, "'The Whole Nation Will Move:' Grassroots Organizing in Harlem and the Advent of the Long, Hot Summers" on June 4, 2018.
Nneka Dennie successfully defended her dissertation entitled, "(Re)defining Radicalism: The Rise of Black Feminism and the Politics of Respectability, 1831-1895" on May 21, 2018.
Carlyn Ferrari, Assistant Professor, English, Adelphi University. She successfully defended her dissertation entitled, "Do Not Separate Her from Her Garden: Anne Spencer's Ecopoetics" on April 10, 2018.
Angelique Warner successfully defended her dissertation entitled, "Negotiating the Law: Black Women Writing Out The Abject" on April 10, 2018.
2017
Trent Masiki, Post-Doctoral Associate, Kilachand Honors College, Boston University.
Kelli Morgan, Inaugural Winston and Carolyn Lowe Curatorial Fellow for Diversity in the Fine Arts at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
Jacinta Saffold, Mellon ACLS Public Fellow and Associate Director for Diversity, Equity, and Student Success at the Association of American Colleges & Universities
Crystal Webster, Assistant Professor, History, University of Texas San Antonio
2016
Markeysha Davis, Assistant Professor/Program Director, Literature and Africana Studies, University of Hartford
2015
H. Zahra Caldwell, Assistant Professor, Ethnic and Gender Studies, Westfield State University
Emahunn Cambpell
Savannah Carroll
Julia Charles, Assistant Professor, Early African American Literature, Auburn University
Karla Zelaya, Assistant Professor, English and Afro-American Literature, University of North Alabama
2014
2013
2012
2011
Kabria Baumgartner, Assistant Professor, American Studies, Women Studies Program and History, University of New Hampshire
Jonathan Fenderson, Assistant Professor, African & African-American Studies, Washington University
2010
Jacqueline Jones, Assistant Professor, English, CUNY LaGuardia Community College
David Lucander, Associate Professor, Mulitcultural Studies, SUNY Rockland Community College
2009
Daniel McClure, Assistant Professor, African American History, Grand Valley State University
Anthony Ratcliff, Assistant Professor, Pan-African Studies, California State University
2008
Thomas Edge, Instructor, Ethnic Studies, Bowling Green State University
Marieta Joyner
Zebulon Miletsky, Assistant Professor, Africana Studies & History, Stony Brook University
2007
Michael Forbes
Lloren Foster
Ousmane Power-Greene, Associate Professor, History and Director of the Africana Studies, Clark University
Rita Reynolds, Chair and Associate Professor, History, Wagner College
Lindsey Swindall, Teaching Assistant Professor, College of Arts and Letters, Stevens Institute of Technology
W.S. Tkweme, Assistant Professor, Pan-African Studies, University of Louisville
Paul Udofia
2006
Sandra Duvivier
David Goldberg, Associate Professor, Africana Studies, Wayne State University
Andrew Rosa, Assistant Professor, Diversity and Community Studies, Western Kentucky University
2005
Tanya Mears, Assistant Professor, History and Politics, Worcester State University
2004
Shawn L. Alexander, Associate Professor, African & African American Studies; Directory of Graduate Studies; and, Director of the Langston Hughes Center, University of Kansas
2003
Stephanie Evans, Chair, History Department and Associate Professor, African American and Africana Women's Studies, Clark Atlanta University
2002
Christopher Lehman, Professor, African American Studies and Ethnic Studies, St. Cloud State University
Terminal M.A. Alumni
Nasir Marumo received their M.A. in May, 2018 from our terminal Master's Program.
Xavier G. Orr received his M.A. in May, 2017 from our terminal Master's Program.
Olivia Brown received her M.A. in May, 2014 from our terminal Master's Program.
Radwa Ashour (1946-2014), the Egyptian writer and scholar born in Cairo, Egypt in 1946, is the department's first Ph.D. graduate. She earned her degree in African American Literature at the University of Massachusetts in 1975 (working jointly in the English & the Du Bois Department).
In 1973, a joyfully-cultivated friendship with Shirley Graham Du Bois, world traveler, litterateur, and widow of W.E.B., led Ashour to UMass. Madame Du Bois, as the école-educated Ashour called her liaison to Amherst, was living in Cairo at the time, and pointed the young Egyptian toward the then-infant Afro-American Studies department here. "She said, 'the best department in the United States is at UMass,'" recalled Ashour, remembering how Du Bois returned from a visit to Massachusetts with an application and a scholarship for her protegé. Ashour has published seven novels, an autobiographical work, two collections of short stories and five books of criticism. Part I of her Granada Trilogy won the Cairo International Book Fair “1994 Book of the Year Award”; the Trilogy won the First Prize of the First Arab Woman Book Fair (Cairo, Nov. 1995). She has co-edited a major four-volume work on Arab women writers (2004) and its English translation: Arab Women Writings: A Critical Reference Guide: 1873-1999 (AUC Press 2008). In 2007 Ashour was awarded the Constantine Cavafy Prize for Literature. She was a professor of English and Comparative Literature, Ain Shams University, Cairo.
