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E. Frances White

Professor Emerita of Individualized Study and Social and Cultural Analysis
f.white@nyu.edu

B.A., Wheaton College, 1971
M.A., Boston University, 1973
Ph.D., Boston University, 1978

E. Frances White is Professor of History and Black Studies at Gallatin and the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis in the Faculty of Arts and Science. She has served as NYU’s Vice Provost for Faculty Development from 2005 to 2008 and Dean of the Gallatin School from 1998 to 2005. She has been awarded fellowships from the Danforth Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, among others. She has also been a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar in Sierra Leone and the Gambia. Before coming to NYU, she taught at Fourah Bay College of the University of Sierra Leone and at Hampshire College. Her awards include the Catherine T. and John D. MacArthur Chair in History (1985-1988) and the 1987 Letitia Brown Memorial Publication Prize for the best book on black women. Her teaching and research interests include the history of Africa and its diaspora, history of gender and sexuality, and critical race theory. Her books include Sierra Leone's Settler Women Traders, Women in Sub-Saharan Africa, and Dark Continent of Our Bodies. She is at work on a book about Afro-British Cultural Studies. She was awarded the 2013-2014 NYU Distinguished Teaching Award.

Teaching and Research Interests

history of Africa and its diaspora; history of gender and sexuality; critical race theory  

Recent News

Professor e. Frances White ​led a two-day symposium, Critical Race Feminisms: Crossing Borders and Generations, and attended a retirement party in her honor, with special guests from NYU and around the globe in early September 2016.

Professor White helped found in 2014 the Critical Race Feminist Collective: a platform for dialogues and conferences between feminists in South Africa and the United States which is partially sponsored by Gallatin. At the international conference at Emory University, held March 27-29, 2014, Whose Beloved Community? Black Civil and LGBT Rights, she presented her paper “Diaspora Dialogues: Afro-British and Black American Masculinities.”  

E. Frances White