Keisha N. Blain received the 2019 Darlene Clark Hine Award from the Organization of American Historians for her book, Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018). The award is given annually for the best book on African American women’s and gender history.
Dr. Blain’s book is a collective biography and the only full-length study on 20th-century Black women nationalists. The study is a major contribution to existing historiographies that centers on African American women, black internationalism, intellectual history, and African American history.
Currently, Dr. Blain serves as an assistant professor in the department of history at the University of Pittsburgh. Previously 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 Pennsylvania State University.
Dr. Blain is a magna cum laude graduate of Binghamton University in New York, where she double majored in history and Africana studies. She holds a master’s degree and Ph.D. both in history from Princeton University in New Jersey.