Ashley Farmer

Ashley Farmer is an historian of African-American women’s history. Her research interests include women’s history, gender history, radical politics, intellectual history, and black feminism. Her first book, Remaking Black Power: How Black Women Transformed an Era, analyzes African-American women’s intellectual production to uncover how they shaped gender constructs and political organizing in the black power movement. She is also the co-editor (with Keisha Blain and Chris Cameron) of New Perspectives on the Black Intellectual Tradition, a collection of innovative research in African American intellectual history.

Professor Farmer’s scholarship has appeared in numerous scholarly venues including the Black Scholar, Women, Gender, and Families of Color, and the Journal of African American History. She has also contributed to popular outlets like The Independent and the History Channel. The Center for American Politics at Harvard University, the Wisconsin Historical Society, the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Research on Women and Politics at Iowa State University, and the American Association of University Women (AAUW) have supported her research. She is also a regular blogger for the African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS).

Professor Farmer received her B.A from Spelman College and her A.M. and Ph.D. from Harvard University. Prior to coming to Boston University, she was a fellow a postdoctoral fellow at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University and the History Department at Duke University.