Erin D. Chapman
Erin D. Chapman
Associate Professor
Contact:
Columbian College of Arts & Sciences
801 22nd Street, NW, Room 309
Washington DC 20052
Dr. Erin D. Chapman holds an A.B. in History from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in African American Studies and History from Yale University. She is a scholar of race and sexuality in U.S. culture and a historian of gender politics in the 20th-century black freedom movement. Her research has been supported by the Ford Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the American Association of University Women, and the Schlesinger Library at Harvard University.
Dr. Chapman is currently researching a biography focusing on the art and activism of radical journalist and playwright Lorraine Hansberry. She is the author of Prove It On Me: New Negroes, Sex, and Popular Culture in the 1920s (Oxford University Press, 2012) and a range of book chapters and articles, including “Staging Gendered Radicalism at the Height of the U.S. Cold War: A Raisin in the Sun and Lorraine Hansberry’s Vision of Freedom,” Gender & History 29:2 (August 2017): 446-467; “The New Negro and the New South” Chapter 4 in A Companion to the Harlem Renaissance, ed. Cherene Sherrard-Johnson, 65-80 (Wiley-Blackwell, 2015); and “Rape Fantasies and Other Assaults: Black Women’s Sexuality and Racial Redemption on Film” Chapter 10 in Black Female Sexualities, eds. Trimiko Melancon and Joanne M. Braxton, 141-158 (Rutgers University Press, 2015).
At GW, Dr. Chapman teaches survey courses in African American history and graduate and undergraduate seminars on African American historiography, African American historical biography, the history of slavery and its legacies, and black radicalisms.
“Staging Gendered Radicalism at the Height of the U.S. Cold War: A Raisin in the Sun and Lorraine Hansberry’s Vision of Freedom,” Gender & History 29:2 (August 2017): 446-467.
Prove It On Me: New Negroes, Sex, and Popular Culture in the 1920s. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.
“The New Negro and the New South” (solicited and accepted for publication as a chapter in A Companion to the Harlem Renaissance, ed. Cherene Sherrard-Johnson; in press at Wiley-Blackwell)
“Rape Fantasies and Other Assaults: Black Women’s Sexuality and Racial Redemption on Film” (accepted for publication as a chapter in Contemporary Black Female Sexualities, eds. Trimiko Melancon and Joanne M. Braxton; forthcoming from Rutgers University Press January 2015)
“Prove It On Me: The New Negro Woman in the Sex-Race Marketplace.” Maroon: The Yale Journal of African American Studies 1:1 (Spring 2006): 63-86.
“Reverse Colorism and the Politics of Black Class and Gender Representation in Soul Food.” Black Arts Quarterly, 4:1 (Winter/Spring 1999): 12-15.
Ph.D., Yale University, 2006
HIST 2305W: Race and Gender in the New Negro Era
HIST 3360: African American History to 1865
HIST 3361: African American History since 1865
HIST 3362: African American Women's History
HIST 6301: African American Historiography
Periodically:
HIST 3001: American Slavery and Its Legacies
HIST 3001: U.S. Black Feminisms 1830-1990
HIST 3001: Race in U.S. Popular Film