Evelyn Higginbotham

Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of History and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. She is currently chair of the Department of African and African American Studies and has held this position ince 2006. Professor Higginbotham earned a Ph.D. from the University of Rochester in American History, an M.A. from Howard University, and her B.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Before coming to Harvard, she taught on the full-time faculties of Dartmouth, the University of Maryland, and the University of Pennsylvania. In addition, she was a Visiting Professor at Princeton University and New York University.

Professor Higginbotham's writings span diverse fields--African American religious history, women's history, civil rights, constructions of racial and gender identity, electoral politics, and the intersection of theory and history. She is co-editor with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., of the African American National Biography (2008)--a multivolume-reference work that presents African American history through the lives of people. Professor Higginbotham is the author of Righteous Discontent: The Women's Movement in the Black Baptist Church: 1880-1920 (1993), which won numerous book prizes and was also included among The New York Times Book Review's Notable Books of the Year in 1993 and 1994.

Dr. Higginbotham has received numerous awards. In April 2003 she was chosen by Harvard University to be a Walter Channing Cabot Fellow in recognition of her achievements and scholarly eminence in the field of history. The Association for the Study of African American Life and History awarded her the Carter G. Woodson Scholars Medallion in October 2008, and the Urban League awarded her the Legend Award in August 2008.