Dr. Keisha N. Blain: Black History Month Keynote

Her research and writing examine the dynamics of race, gender and politics in both national and global perspectives. She completed a Ph.D. in History from Princeton University in 2014. She is a Professor of Africana Studies and History at Brown University, a columnist for MSNBC, and former president of the African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS). She is the 2022 recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2022 Andrew Carnegie Fellow.

Dr. Blain is the author of Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom (2018), winner of the First Book Award from the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians and winner of the Darlene Clark Hine Award from the Organization of American Historians. Dr. Blain’s second book Until I Am Free: Fannie Lou Hamer's Enduring Message to America (2021) was nominated for an NAACP Image Award and selected as a finalist for the 2022 National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography

Her newest book, Without Fear: Black Women and the Making of Human Rights (W.W. Norton, September 2025), explores the long and overlooked history of Black women’s global activism and their central role in shaping the modern human rights movement. Drawing on decades of archival research, Blain offers a sweeping narrative that centers women as architects of justice and freedom struggles across borders—challenging conventional accounts of who drives human rights progress and why.

Dr. Blain is also the editor of five books, including the #1 New York Times Best Seller Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619–2019, edited with Ibram X. Kendi (2021). Four Hundred Souls was selected as a finalist for the 2022 Carnegie Medal of Excellence in Nonfiction. Her most recent collection, Wake Up America: Black Women on the Future of Democracy (W.W. Norton, 2024) brings together the voices of major progressive Black women politicians, grassroots activists, and intellectuals to offer critical insights on how we can create a more equitable political future.

Dr. Blain’s writing has been featured in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Nation, Foreign Affairs, and more. She frequently offers commentary on international, national, and local media outlets, such as BBC, PBS, MSNBC, CNN, NPR and Al Jazeera. She is the recipient of more than a dozen prestigious awards and fellowships, including a W.E.B. Du Bois Fellowship at Harvard University and fellowships from New America, the Institute for Advanced Study, the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, the American Association of University Women (AAUW) and the Ford Foundation. In 2018, she was appointed to the Organization of American Historians’ Distinguished Lectureship Program. She is a widely sought-after speaker on United States history, African American history, African Diaspora Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies.

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