Keisha N. Blain has received the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians award for a first book that deals substantially with the history of women, gender, and/or sexuality. Her book, Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), demonstrates how a supposedly “failed movement,” the activism of Black nationalist women who challenged White supremacy and advocated for full citizenship and human rights for people of African descent, could nonetheless offer important sources of identity, voice, and power to the women who constituted it.
Dr. Blain is an associate professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh, where she has served on the faculty since 2017. Earlier in her career, she served as an assistant professor of history at the University of Iowa and as a postdoctoral research fellow in the Africana Research Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Her teaching interests include civil rights and Black Power, Black internationalism, and African American women’s history.
In addition to Set the World on Fire, Dr. Blain is the co-editor of three books: New Perspectives on the Black Intellectual Tradition (Northwestern University Press, 2018), Charleston Syllabus: Readings on Race, Racism, and Racial Violence (University of Georgia Press, 2018), and To Turn the Whole World Over: Black Women and Internationalism (University of Illinois Press, 2019).
Dr. Blain is a magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, and high honors graduate of Binghamton University in New York where she majored in history and Africana studies. She holds a master’s degree and Ph.D. both in history from Princeton University in New Jersey.