Biography

Dr. Nneka D. Dennie is a Black feminist scholar with specializations in nineteenth- and twentieth-century African American history.  Her research examines African diasporan history and Black intellectual thought with an emphasis on nineteenth-century African American women thinkers. She is currently an Assistant Professor of History, core faculty in Africana Studies, and affiliate faculty in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Washington & Lee University. Dr. Dennie’s teaching interests include African American and Caribbean history from the seventeenth century to the present. Her course offerings include study abroad courses in Barbados, such as Women and Slavery in the Black Atlantic, and Between Paradise and Terror: Caribbean Slavery and Colonialism.

Dr. Dennie’s first book, Mary Ann Shadd Cary: Essential Writings of a Nineteenth-Century Black Radical Feminist, was published Oxford University Press in 2023. Mary Ann Shadd Cary won the 14th MLA Prize for Bibliographical or Archival Scholarship (2024-2025). Her monograph in progress, Redefining Radicalism: Black Women Intellectuals in the Nineteenth Century, explores the broad spectrum of Black radical ideas and actions that African American women used to advance Black liberation throughout the nineteenth century. It argues that early Black feminists were central to constructing Black radical thought because of their analyses of race, gender, labor, and citizenship, as well as their critiques of Black and women’s activism.

In 2024, Dr. Dennie was one of ten recipients nationwide of the Mellon Emerging Faculty Leaders Award from the Institute of Citizens and Scholars. From 2022-2023, she held a Mellon Just Transformations Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Center for Black Digital Research at Pennsylvania State University, where she was part of collaborative leadership teams coordinating Douglass Day 2023 and the Black Women’s Organizing Archive. Dr. Dennie’s research has been supported by the Summer Institute on Tenure and Professional Advancement; a Consortium for Faculty Diversity Fellowship at Davidson College; and the MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences Diversity Predoctoral Fellowship. Her work has appeared in Palimpsest: A Journal of Women, Gender, and the Black International; Atlantic Studies: Global Currents; The Routledge Companion to Black Women's Cultural Histories: Across the Diaspora, From Ancient Times to the Present; Feminist Studies; the Oxford Handbook of W.E.B. Du Bois; Slate; Business Insider; and the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Dr. Dennie earned her PhD in African American Studies from the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst). She holds a graduate certificate in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from UMass Amherst, and completed her B.A. in Political Science with Honors in Africana Studies at Williams College.