Anastasia Curwood, Ph.D.

Anastasia Curwood is Hallam Professor and Department Chair of History and Director of the Commonwealth Institute for Black Studies at the University of Kentucky. She writes about twentieth-century African-American women and gender through the lens of Black Americans’ engagements with social and political institutions. Her first book, Stormy Weather: Middle-Class African American Marriages Between the Two World Wars (UNC Press, 2010) centered on contests over African-Americans' marriages in the early twentieth century. Her most recent work, Shirley Chisholm: Champion of Black Feminist Power Politics (UNC Press, 2023), traces the course of Chisholm’s extraordinary life, from Caribbean roots to her pathbreaking career in the US Congress and quest for the presidency. Curwood is the recipient of a Career Enhancement Fellowship from the Institute of Citizens and Scholars, a Ford Postdoctoral Fellowship, and a Research Fellowship at the James Weldon Johnson Institute at Emory University.