Thavolia Glymph recently became the 140th president of the American Historical Association. She is the first Black woman to hold the position.
Dr. Gyymph is the Peabody Family Distinguished Professor of History and professor of law at Duke University. She is the past president of the Southern Historical Association.
Professor Glymph is the author of Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household (Cambridge University, Press, 2008) and The Women’s Fight: The Civil War’s Battles for Home, Freedom, and Nation (University of North Carolina Press, 2020). This latest book explores the role of women during the Civil War. It shows the complicated battles that women — Black and White, enslaved and free — took on to define the meaning of freedom, home, and nation in the North and South.
Professor Glymph joined the faculty at Duke University in 2000. She is a graduate of Hampton University in Virginia and holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana.