Brenda Stevenson

Brenda E. Stevenson is the Distinguished Professor and inaugural Nickoll Family Endowed Chair in the Department of History at the University of California, Los Angeles, as well as a Professor in the Department of African American Studies. She earned her B.A. from the University of Virginia as an Echols Scholar, an M.A. in African American Studies, and M.A. and Ph.D. in American History from Yale University in 1990. Stevenson previously served as Chair of the UCLA Department of History from 1998 to 2002 and Chair of the Interdepartmental Program in African American Studies from 2004 to 2010. An internationally recognized scholar, her work centers on race, slavery, gender, family, and racial conflict, examining the comparative historical experiences of women, family, and community across racial and ethnic lines in the United States, the American South, and the Atlantic World from the colonial period through the late 20th century.

Stevenson's major publications include Life in Black and White: Family and Community in the Slave South (Oxford University Press, 1996), winner of the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Prize in 1997; The Contested Murder of Latasha Harlins: Justice, Gender, and the Origins of the L.A. Riots (Oxford University Press, 2013), recipient of the 2014 James A. Rawley Prize from the Organization of American Historians; What is Slavery? (Polity Press, 2015); and What Sorrows Labour in My Parents' Breast?: A History of the Enslaved Black Family (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023). She edited The Journals of Charlotte Forten Grimké (Oxford University Press, 1988) and served as senior co-editor of Black Women in America, a three-volume encyclopedia (Oxford University Press, 2005). Her accolades encompass the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship (2015-2016), Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship at Stanford's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (2016-2017), National Humanities Center John Hope Franklin Senior Fellowship (2015), UCLA's 127th Faculty Research Lecturer, UCLA Gold Shield Faculty Award (2014), and John W. Blassingame Award from the Southern Historical Association (2015). Stevenson holds positions on editorial boards for the Journal of Black Studies, Women, Gender and Families of Color, and Journal of the Civil War Era, and is a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians and the Association for the Study of African American Life and History.

Professional Email: stevenso@history.ucla.edu