AMRITA CHAKRABARTI MYERS
Activist + Author + African American scholar + Historical Private Detective
EXPERTISE
How to interrogate the silence of historical erasure
Ongoing wounds of white supremacy
Race, sex, and politics
Social justice for community organizers
Equity workshops
How to confront and change hostile environments
African American and women’s history
Race and gender
Enslaved and free black women in the Old South
HOME BASE
Bloomington, IN
LINKS
Amrita Chakrabarti Myers is an award-winning archival historian, writer, educator, and community-based organizer. She earned her doctorate in US History from Rutgers University and specializes in Black Women’s History, Antebellum History, Slavery, and the American South. A committed activist both on and off campus, Myers is regularly interviewed by media outlets ranging from PBS and NPR to Fox News on issues of race and gender justice, and she has published editorials and articles on policing, anti-Blackness, and racism writ large in a variety of newspapers including the Washington Post and the Louisville Courier-Journal.
Her first book, Forging Freedom: Black Women and the Pursuit of Liberty in Antebellum Charleston, was published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2011 and received several awards including the 2012 Julia Cherry Spruill Book Prize from the Southern Association of Women Historians and the 2011 Anna Julia Cooper-C.L.R. James Book Prize from the National Council for Black Studies. Her latest book, The Vice President’s Black Wife: The Untold Life of Julia Chinn (Ferris & Ferris, 2023) is now available at all retailers. She is currently the Ruth N. Halls Associate Professor of History and Gender Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington where she is also the Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of History.
A speaker with more than twenty years of experience, Dr. Myers gives keynotes and presentations at women’s rights organizations, corporations, academic societies, universities, and literary festivals. Her topics range from her scholarly work on enslaved and free Black women to the contemporary issues of misogynoir, systemic racism, gender bias, microaggressions, unconscious bias in the workplace, the long history of policing in the United States, and more. Regardless of the venue, her talks help reveal our history and dismantle the unjust systems holding us all back.
TITLES
