Noël M. Voltz

Dr. Noël M. Voltz serves as an Assistant Professor of History in the College of Arts and Sciences at Case Western Reserve University, a position she has held since 2020 after previous appointments at the University of Utah and Trinity Washington University.

She holds a Ph.D. in History from The Ohio State University (2014), with doctoral research centered on women of color in slavery and freedom across the United States and Atlantic World.

Dr. Voltz specializes in the intersection of African American, Early American, and African Diaspora histories with emphases on Black women's agency and sexual negotiation for freedom. Her current book manuscript The Sword in Her Hands: Louisiana’s Free Women of Color and their Sexual Negotiation for Freedom (under contract with University of Illinois Press) analyzes how antebellum Louisiana’s free women of color leveraged sexuality as political strategy. Concurrently, she co-edits the second edition of The Encyclopedia of African American History (ABC-Clio), a 4-volume reference work exploring cultural resistance and nationalism.

Her teaching portfolio spans The African American Experience, Comparative Slaveries in the African Diaspora, Black Women in Slavery and Freedom, and Race/Gender in Early America, with recurring thematic examinations of power structures, identity formation, labor economies, and legal constructions of race. She is developing new courses on racial/cultural/sexual borderland histories examining mixed-heritage communities across American historical contexts.