Introducing: Duchess Harris

Duchess Harris

Duchess Harris is the author of two books, Black Feminist Politics from Kennedy to Clinton/Obama (Palgrave Macmillan) and an edited volume with Bruce Baum, Racially Writing the Republic: Racists, Race Rebels, and Transformations of American Identity (Duke University Press).

Professor Harris was a Mellon Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. She graduated from PENN in 1991 with a degree in American History and Afro-American Studies. Six years later, she earned a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Minnesota. She was one of two graduates in a class of sixteen to be nominated for the American Studies Association National Dissertation Prize. She spent her final year in grad school as a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute on Race and Poverty at the University of Minnesota Law School.

In 1998, Harris joined the faculty at Macalester College. She became the first Chair of the American Studies Department in 2003 and was granted tenure in 2004. She earned a Juris Doctorate in January 2011, and has an expertise in Civil Rights Law.  She was promoted to the rank of Full Professor in May of 2013.  The rank of professor is the highest of the standard academic ranks in the United States, and is held by 29.5% of U.S. academics. Please visit her website to learn more about Professor Harris and her work.