Alison Parker

Alison Parker is the Richards Professor of American History and History Department Chair at the University of Delaware in the College of Arts & Sciences. She is also the Founder of the UD Anti-Racism Initiative (UDARI), demonstrating her commitment to advancing racial justice both within academia and the broader community.

Dr. Parker received her B.A. in History and the History of Art from the University of California, Berkeley (Phi Beta Kappa, 1988), and M.A. (1990) and Ph.D. (1993) in History from Johns Hopkins University. Her scholarly work has been recognized through prestigious fellowships, including an Andrew W. Mellon Advanced Fellowship at the James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference at Emory University during 2017-2018.

Dr. Parker's research and teaching interests focus on the intersections of gender, race, disability, citizenship and the law in U.S. history. Her scholarship demonstrates expertise in civil rights history, women's suffrage movements, Black history, and the historical experiences of women at the crossroads of multiple identity categories. She has made significant contributions to understanding intersectionality in historical contexts long before the term became widely used in academic discourse.

Dr. Parker's publications reveal a trajectory of increasingly focused work on Black women's history and activism, with her acclaimed biography of civil rights activist and suffragist Mary Church Terrell representing a major contribution to the field. Her work consistently connects historical analysis with contemporary issues of racial and gender justice.

Her major publications include:

• Unceasing Militant: The Life of Mary Church Terrell (University of North Carolina Press, 2020; second edition, paperback, March 2025)
• Articulating Rights: Nineteenth-Century American Women on Race, Reform, and the State (2010)
• Purifying America: Women, Cultural Reform, and Pro-Censorship Activism, 1873–1933 (1997)
• Co-edited three anthologies including Interconnections: Gender and Race in American History
• New York Times op-ed 'When White Women Wanted a Monument to Black 'Mammies,''

Dr. Parker is actively engaged in public scholarship through media appearances, public talks, and community conversations about racial justice, women's history, and civil rights. She is trained to lead anti-racism and racial justice workshops and works to recruit and retain a diverse community of faculty and students at the University of Delaware.