Two Women Academics at Universities in Texas Awarded Pulitzer Prizes for Their Books

Jacqueline Jones has received the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in History for her book No Right to an Honest Living: The Struggles of Boston’s Black Workers in the Civil War Era (Basic Books, 2023).

Dr. Jones is the Ellen C. Temple Chair of Women’s History and Mastin Gentry White Professor of Southern History Emerita at the University of Texas Austin, where she has served since 2008. She previously served as the Harry S. Truman Professor at Brandeis University in Massachusetts for 17 years.

Throughout her career, Dr. Jones has taught both undergraduate and graduate courses and conducted extensive research on American history. In addition to her recent award-winning publication, she has authored 10 other books, including two previous Pulitzer Prize finalists: A Dreadful Deceit: The Myth of Race from the Colonial Era to Obama’s America (Basic Books, 2013) and Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family From Slavery to the Present (Basic Books, 2009).

Dr. Jones is a graduate of the University of Delaware where she majored in American studies. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in American history from the University of Wisconsin.

Cristina Rivera Garza has received the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Memoir or Autobiography for her book Liliana’s Invincible Summer: A Sister’s Search for Justice (Hogarth, 2023).

Currently, Dr. Garza serves as the M.D. Anderson Professor in Hispanic Studies and director of the creative writing program in Hispanic studies at the University of Houston where she has worked for the past eight years. Prior to her current appointment, she served as a professor and director of the master of fine arts in writing program in the department of literature at the University of California, San Diego.

Dr. Garza has authored three collections of short stories, five collections of poetry, three non-fiction books, and six novels including The Taiga Syndrome (Dorthy, 2018). As an academic, she has written extensively on the social history of mental illness in early twentieth-century Mexico.

Dr. Garza is graduate of the National Autonomous University of Mexico where she majored in sociology. She holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in Latin American history from the University of Houston.