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BIO - Dr. Francille Rusan Wilson

Department of African American Studies
University of Maryland
2169 LeFrak Hall
College Park, Maryland 20742
(301) 405-1158
(301) 314-9932 (Fax)
fwilson@aasp.umd.edu

Associate Professor
African American Studies Department
University of Maryland, College Park

University of Pennsylvania, M.A., 1979; Ph.D., 1988 American History Harvard University, M.A.T.; Wellesley College, B.A. Wellesley College Scholar

Francille Rusan Wilson is an Associate Professor of African American Studies at the University of Maryland College and Affiliate Associate Professor of American Studies and Women Studies. She is an intellectual and labor historian whose current research examines the intersections between black labor movements, black social scientists, and black women's history during the Jim Crow era. Her book, The Segregated Scholars: Black Social Scientists and the Creation of Black Labor Studies, 1890-1950 (University of Virginia Press) examines three generations of scholar-activists. Her biography in-progress of the lawyer and economist Sadie T. M. Alexander investigates representations of black women workers and the impact of racism and sexism on black women in male professions in the early 20th century.

Wilson is a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians (2003-2005), and was the Association of Black Women Historians' 2002 luncheon speaker. She was elected to the Executive Council of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (2001-2007) and the Board of the Labor and Working Class History Association (2005-2007). She is a member of the Meanings and Representations of Work in the Lives of Women of Color faculty seminar 2001--2005; and was in the Ford Foundation Faculty Research Seminar on AThe Meanings and Representations of Black Women and Work (1995-2000).

Her publications include All of the Glory...Faded...Quickly: Sadie T. M. Alexander and Black Professional Women, 1920-1950; in Sister Circle: Black Women and Work; Our Foremothers Keepers: The Association of Black Women Historians, in Black Women's History at the Intersection of Knowledge of Knowledge an Power: ABWHs Twentieth Anniversary Anthology; Re-Inventing the Past and Circumscribing the Future: Authenticite and the Negative Image of Women's Work in Zaire, in Women and Work in Africa; Going, Going, Gone: Social Research, Public Policy, and Black Industrial Workers, in Black Renaissance, Renaissance Noire; Racial Consciousness and Black Scholarship: Charles H. Wesley and the Construction of Negro Labor in the United States, in Journal of Negro History, and This Past Was Waiting for Me When I Came: The Contextualization of Black Women's History, in Feminist Studies.

Publications (Selected, 2000-2005)

The Segregated Scholars: Black Social Scientists and the Development of Black Labor Studies, 1890-1950. Forthcoming, University of Virginia Press

Introduction: New Directions in African American Women's History, Journal of African American History 89:3 (Summer 2004), 199-204

Black and White Women Historians Together? Journal of African American History 89:3 (Summer 2004), 266-269.

Introduction: Historical Overview of Black Women and Work, [with Sharon Harley and Shirley Logan] to Sister Circle: Black Women and Work, edited by Sharon Harley and the Black Women and Work Collective. Rutgers University Press, 2002, 1-10.

'All of the Glory...Faded...Quickly': Sadie T. M. Alexander and Black Professional Women, 1920-1950, chapter in Sister Circle: Black Women and Work, ed. Harley et al, 164-183.

Sadie T. M. Alexander: A 'True Daughter' of the AME Church, A.M.E. Church Review CXIX no. 391 (July-September 2003) 40-46.

"The Atlanta University Conference on Urban Negro Problems," "Carnegie Hall Meeting in 1904," "Horace Cayton," "Allison Davis," "Archibald Grimke," "George E. Haynes," "The Negro Artisan," "Reverdy C. Ransom," "R. R. Wright, Sr. and Jr." in Charles D. Lowery and John F. Marszalek, eds., The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Civil Rights: From Emancipation to the Present (Greenwood Press, 2nd revised edition, 2003.

Our Foremothers Keepers: The Association of Black Women Historians, chapter 2 of Black Women's History at the Intersection of Knowledge and Power: ABWH'S Twentieth Anniversary Anthology eds. Rosalyn Terborg-Penn and Janice Sumler-Edmund (Tapestry Press, 2000) 13-24.

Presentations (Selected)

But Some of Us Are Brave: Coloring Women's History and Engendering African American Studies. Organization of American Historians 2004 Distinguished Lecture delivered at University of Memphis, (Hooks Lecture Series) 19 February 2004 and Stetson University, DeLand Florida (University Scholarship Day) 7 April 2004

Moderator, Teaching to Transgress panel, Conference on the Legacy of Nell Irvin Painter, Princeton University 2 April 2004

Becoming Woman of the Year: Sadie T. M. Alexander and the Construction of a Public Persona as a Professional and a Race Woman Paper for International Bellagio Conference on Meanings and Representations of Work in the Lives of Women of Color, August 2004

Sadie T. Alexander's Construction of A Public Persona, Keynote Address Annual Luncheon of the Association of Black Women Historians, September 2002

Black Women's Labor Studies During the Great Migration: Recovering the Lost Generation of Black Female Social Scientists, 1915-1940, North American Labor History Conference, Detroit, Michigan October 19, 2001

Shaping American and International Legal Protections for Blacks and Women: Sadie T. M. Alexander's Crusade in the U.S. and U.N., 1944-1964, Paper presented at the Collegium for African American Research, Sardinia, March 23, 2001.

Trends in African American History, 1900-2000," American Historical Association, Chicago, January 2000.

Fellowships and Awards (Selected)

Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer 2003-2005

Board of Directors, Labor and Working Class History Association 2004

Program Committee, 2005 Berkshire Conference on Women=s History

Wesley-Logan Prize Committee, American Historical Association

Executive Council, Association for the Study of African American Life and History, 2002-2007

Associate Editor, Journal of African American History, 2003-2004

Program Committee Chair, 2003 Annual Meeting, ASALH

Participant, The Meanings and Representations of Work in the Lives of Women of Color, Ford Foundation Faculty Research Seminar, Afro-American Studies Program, University of Maryland, 1999-2005

Research Fellow, 1996-1998, Center for African American History and Culture, Smithsonian, in residence Summer 1996.

Participant, The Meanings and Representations of Black Women and Work, Ford Foundation Faculty Research Seminar, Afro-American Studies Program, University of Maryland, 1995-2001

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