President–Keisha N. Blain
Keisha N. Blain is a historian who writes on race, politics, and gender. She obtained a PhD in History from Princeton University. She is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh and the Editor-in-Chief of The North Star. She served as the first senior editor of Black Perspectives from 2014 to 2018. She is the author of the award-winning book Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018) and co-editor of To Turn the Whole World Over: Black Women and Internationalism (University of Illinois Press, 2019); New Perspectives on the Black Intellectual Tradition (Northwestern University Press, 2018); and Charleston Syllabus: Readings on Race, Racism and Racial Violence (University of Georgia Press, 2016). Her work has been published in several academic journals such as the Journal of Social History and Souls; and popular outlets including the Huffington Post, The Washington Post, and The Feminist Wire. Follow her on Twitter @KeishaBlain.
Vice President–Brandon R. Byrd
Brandon R. Byrd is an Assistant Professor of History at Vanderbilt University and an intellectual historian of the 19th and 20th century United States with specializations in African American History and the African Diaspora. He has published articles in numerous outlets including Slavery & Abolition and The Journal of Haitian Studies and his first book, The Black Republic: African Americans, Haiti, and the Rise of Radical Black Internationalism, is forthcoming with the University of Pennsylvania Press. He is the co-editor of two forthcoming edited volumes: one on the Black intellectual tradition (Northwestern University Press) and a second entitled Haiti for the Haitians, an annotated translation of Haitian intellectual Louis Joseph Janvier’s life and work (Liverpool University Press). Along with co-editing the Black Lives and Liberation series published by Vanderbilt University Press, Byrd is also vice president of the African American Intellectual History Society. Follow him on Twitter @bronaldbyrd.
Treasurer–Ashley D. Farmer
Ashley D. Farmer is a historian of Black women’s history, intellectual history, and radical politics. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Departments of History and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas-Austin. She is the author of Remaking Black Power: How Black Women Transformed an Era (UNC Press, 2017) and co-editor of New Perspectives on the Black Intellectual Tradition. Her scholarship has appeared in numerous venues including The Black Scholar and The Journal of African American History. She has also contributed to popular outlets like The Independent, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Public Books, and the History Channel. She is also the Co-Editor of the Black Power Series with Ibram X. Kendi, published with NYU Press. Follow her on Twitter @drashleyfarmer.
Interim Secretary–Grace D. Gipson
Grace D. Gipson is a Visiting Professor in African American Studies at Georgia State University and a doctoral candidate in the African American Studies program with a designated emphasis in New Media at the University of California Berkeley. Grace’s area of research interest centers on black popular culture, digital humanities, representations of race and gender within comic books & graphic novels, Afrofuturism, and race and new media. Her current dissertation project interrogates the formation of a Black female superhero identity within comics and graphic novels through such topics as, African queer love, disability as empowering, coloring utopias/dystopias, promoting Black Girl Magic in STEM, and creating a new media legacy for Black female voices. Grace’s work has been featured in various publications and book chapters in such outlets as Huffington Post, NPR.org, The Diaspora (publication of the Department of African American Studies at UC Berkeley), and the FCH Annals. Outside of the academy, you can find Grace participating in one fourth of the #BlackComicsChat twitter podcast crew and regular contributor for the website Black Girl Nerds.
2020 Conference Chair–Christopher Cameron
Christopher Cameron is an Associate Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He received his Ph.D. in History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of To Plead Our Own Cause: African Americans in Massachusetts and the Making of the Antislavery Movement (Kent State University Press, 2014) and co-editor of New Perspectives on the Black Intellectual Tradition (Northwestern University Press, 2018). His new book, Black Freethinkers: A History of African American Secularism (Northwestern University Press, 2019), explores African American humanism, agnosticism, and atheism from the late-18th century to the civil rights era. Drawing from memoirs, novels, poetry, newspapers, and archival materials, he argues that secularism has been a key component of black political and intellectual life for nearly 150 years. In addition to his research, he was the founding president of the African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS). Follow him on Twitter @ccamrun2.