معرفی
Jeanne Theoharis is a Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College, City University of New York (CUNY), where she has taught since 1996. Her scholarship critically examines the civil rights and Black Power movements with a focus on northern United States contexts, challenging conventional narratives that center exclusively on the South and highlighting the roles of women and everyday activists in the struggle for racial justice.
Her educational background includes an A.B. in Afro-American Studies from Harvard University (1991) and a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (1996).
Theoharis's research spans 20th-century African American history, civil rights and Black Power movements, contemporary politics of race and gender, social policy, urban studies, and post-9/11 racial politics. She specializes in exposing the pervasive nature of Jim Crow segregation in northern cities, reinterpreting figures like Rosa Parks beyond the Montgomery bus boycott myth, and analyzing the connections between historical civil rights struggles and contemporary movements like Black Lives Matter. Her work consistently emphasizes how race intersects with gender, class, and geography in shaping American democracy.
Over the past decade, her publications reveal three major trends: meticulous archival recovery of northern civil rights activism, deconstruction of historical myths surrounding key figures, and urgent connections between past and present racial justice movements. She has produced influential scholarship on Rosa Parks' lifelong militancy, Martin Luther King Jr.'s northern campaigns, and the systemic nature of segregation in cities like New York and Boston.
Her scientific awards include:
- 2018 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize for Nonfiction for A More Beautiful and Terrible History
- NAACP Image Award for The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks
- Letitia Woods Brown Award from the Association of Black Women Historians
- Choice Top 25 Academic Titles for 2013
- American Association of University Women American Fellowship (2009-10)
- National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Fellowship
- Rockefeller Humanities Fellowship
Theoharis actively mentors students through independent research courses and has served as consulting producer for the Peabody Award-winning documentary adaptation of her Rosa Parks biography. Her grant-funded work includes co-directing an NEH Summer Faculty Seminar on Black Freedom Studies and curating the 'Conversations in Black Freedom Studies' series. She has testified before Congress on voting rights and frequently engages with media to contextualize current events through historical analysis.
She co-curates the 'Conversations in Black Freedom Studies' series at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, creating a vital platform for scholars, activists, and the public to discuss the history and legacy of the Black freedom movement through lectures, film screenings, and community dialogues.
