Nneka Dennie Receives National Book Prize for Outstanding Bibliographical Scholarship

Nneka Dennie, assistant professor of history at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, has been named the fourteenth recipient of the Modern Language Association of America Prize for Bibliographical or Archival Scholarship for her book, Mary Ann Shadd Cary: Essential Writings of a Nineteenth-Century Black Radical Feminist (Oxford University Press, 2023). The award-winning publication examines the works of Mary Ann Shadd Cary, the first Black woman newspaper editor in North America.

Dr. Dennie began her career at Washington and Lee University in 2020. In addition to her primary appointment in the department of history, she is a core faculty member of the Africana studies program and an affiliate member of the women’s, gender, and sexuality studies program. As a Black feminist scholar, she specializes in nineteenth- and twentieth-century African American history and Black intellectual thought. She is currently working on her second book, Redefining Radicalism: Black Women Intellectuals in the Nineteenth Century.

Dr. Dennie is a graduate of Williams College in Massachusetts, where she majored in political science with honors in Africana studies. She holds a Ph.D. in African America studies from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.