Erin D. Chapman

Dr. Erin D. Chapman holds an A.B. in History from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in African American Studies and History from Yale University. She is a scholar of race and sexuality in U.S. culture and a historian of gender politics in the 20th-century black freedom movement. Her research has been supported by the Ford Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the American Association of University Women, and the Schlesinger Library at Harvard University.

Dr. Chapman is currently researching a biography focusing on the art and activism of radical journalist and playwright Lorraine Hansberry. She is the author of Prove It On Me: New Negroes, Sex, and Popular Culture in the 1920s (Oxford University Press, 2012) and a range of book chapters and articles, including “Staging Gendered Radicalism at the Height of the U.S. Cold War: A Raisin in the Sun and Lorraine Hansberry’s Vision of Freedom,” Gender & History 29:2 (August 2017): 446-467; “The New Negro and the New South” Chapter 4 in A Companion to the Harlem Renaissance, ed. Cherene Sherrard-Johnson, 65-80 (Wiley-Blackwell, 2015); and “Rape Fantasies and Other Assaults: Black Women’s Sexuality and Racial Redemption on Film” Chapter 10 in Black Female Sexualities, eds. Trimiko Melancon and Joanne M. Braxton, 141-158 (Rutgers University Press, 2015).

At GW, Dr. Chapman teaches survey courses in African American history and graduate and undergraduate seminars on African American historiography, African American historical biography, the history of slavery and its legacies, and black radicalisms.

Complete C.V. (PDF)