Photo credit: US-UK Fulbright Commission
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SHORT BIO...I'm a UK-based writer and historian. I'm primarily a historian of the modern United States, with much of my work focusing on the history of the Black Press and the history of Black Chicago.
More broadly, I'm interested in the relationship between race, space, media representation and social justice across the Black diaspora. Please click below for a copy of my academic C.V., or scroll down further for a more substantive bio. - West C.V., March 2021 - |
FULL BIO...
I'm a UK-based writer and historian. I'm primarily a historian of the modern United States, with much of my work focusing on the history of the Black Press and the history of Black Chicago. More broadly, I'm interested in the relationship between race, space, media representation and social justice across the Black diaspora.
My first book, Ebony Magazine and Lerone Bennett Jr.: Popular Black History in Postwar America, was published in 2020. It was named as one of the year's best Black history books by Black Perspectives. My second book, A House for the Struggle: the Black Press and the Built Environment, will be published in early 2022. Mixing cultural history, urban studies, literature, and architecture, this work offers a fresh interpretation of Black press history through the lens of the built environment.
I'm currently working on two monographs. Our Kind of Historian is the first book-length biography of leading Black popular historian and public intellectual Lerone Bennett Jr. Tracing Bennett's work and activism from his childhood in Mississippi to the publication of his landmark 2000 study Forced Into Glory, this work recovers Bennett's influence for a new generation. The Modern Black Press in the United States provides a fresh take on the history of the Black press, updating earlier survey works to highlight the historical influence and continued impact of the Black press in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
In addition to my book-length work, I've published more than twenty academic articles and book chapters in edited collections, ranging from the sexual politics of Black consumer magazines in the 1970s to the transatlantic activism of the Reverend Al Sharpton. I have received research and conference funding from, among other organizations, the British Association of American Studies, Historians of the Twentieth Century United States, the Royal Historical Society, Duke University, the Hagley Library, the Terra Foundation, and the US Embassy in London.
I was awarded a 2017-18 Fulbright Scholarship to teach and research at Elon University in North Carolina, and from 2018-21 I held a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship in the department of History at Northumbria University Newcastle. In 2013 I was a Black Metropolis Research Consortium Summer Fellow, based at the University of Chicago. I was also a BMRC fellow in 2015 and 2017. In 2014 I was a doctoral fellow at the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress, and a postgraduate fellow at the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library. In 2015 I was a Carter G. Woodson fellow at Emory University. In 2016 I was a postdoctoral fellow at the Eccles Centre, and in 2020 I was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship at the Kluge Center.
I received my PhD from the University of Manchester in Dec. 2015, where I was funded by an AHRC doctoral scholarship and the President's Doctoral Scholar Award. Sections of my doctoral thesis received the 2014 Ambassador's Award from the British Association of American Studies (for the best essay by a UK postgraduate student) and was a runner-up the organisations 2015 postgraduate essay prize. In 2016, my thesis was a runner-up in the Blanchard Dissertation Prize from the American Journalism Historians Association.
Prior to this I was an undergraduate and postgraduate student at the University of Liverpool, where I received SSHRC Masters funding and a Christopher Bushell Undergraduate Scholarship, and was awarded the Sheila Marriner Prize (for the best undergraduate history dissertation), the Blanche Meyrick Prize (for best performance in English Literature), and the Combined Honors Arts Prize (for the highest graduation mark of any Combined Honours student).
My first book, Ebony Magazine and Lerone Bennett Jr.: Popular Black History in Postwar America, was published in 2020. It was named as one of the year's best Black history books by Black Perspectives. My second book, A House for the Struggle: the Black Press and the Built Environment, will be published in early 2022. Mixing cultural history, urban studies, literature, and architecture, this work offers a fresh interpretation of Black press history through the lens of the built environment.
I'm currently working on two monographs. Our Kind of Historian is the first book-length biography of leading Black popular historian and public intellectual Lerone Bennett Jr. Tracing Bennett's work and activism from his childhood in Mississippi to the publication of his landmark 2000 study Forced Into Glory, this work recovers Bennett's influence for a new generation. The Modern Black Press in the United States provides a fresh take on the history of the Black press, updating earlier survey works to highlight the historical influence and continued impact of the Black press in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
In addition to my book-length work, I've published more than twenty academic articles and book chapters in edited collections, ranging from the sexual politics of Black consumer magazines in the 1970s to the transatlantic activism of the Reverend Al Sharpton. I have received research and conference funding from, among other organizations, the British Association of American Studies, Historians of the Twentieth Century United States, the Royal Historical Society, Duke University, the Hagley Library, the Terra Foundation, and the US Embassy in London.
I was awarded a 2017-18 Fulbright Scholarship to teach and research at Elon University in North Carolina, and from 2018-21 I held a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship in the department of History at Northumbria University Newcastle. In 2013 I was a Black Metropolis Research Consortium Summer Fellow, based at the University of Chicago. I was also a BMRC fellow in 2015 and 2017. In 2014 I was a doctoral fellow at the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress, and a postgraduate fellow at the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library. In 2015 I was a Carter G. Woodson fellow at Emory University. In 2016 I was a postdoctoral fellow at the Eccles Centre, and in 2020 I was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship at the Kluge Center.
I received my PhD from the University of Manchester in Dec. 2015, where I was funded by an AHRC doctoral scholarship and the President's Doctoral Scholar Award. Sections of my doctoral thesis received the 2014 Ambassador's Award from the British Association of American Studies (for the best essay by a UK postgraduate student) and was a runner-up the organisations 2015 postgraduate essay prize. In 2016, my thesis was a runner-up in the Blanchard Dissertation Prize from the American Journalism Historians Association.
Prior to this I was an undergraduate and postgraduate student at the University of Liverpool, where I received SSHRC Masters funding and a Christopher Bushell Undergraduate Scholarship, and was awarded the Sheila Marriner Prize (for the best undergraduate history dissertation), the Blanche Meyrick Prize (for best performance in English Literature), and the Combined Honors Arts Prize (for the highest graduation mark of any Combined Honours student).