According to OAH, presidents of the organization appoint their “most illustrious and dynamic colleagues” to the program, which provides public lectures by “outstanding historians who have made major contributions to U.S. history.” Only 1 percent of U.S. historians are selected.
Armstrong Dunbar specializes in 18th- and 19th-century African-American women's history. She is the author of A Fragile Freedom: African American Women and Emancipation in the Antebellum City. Published by the Yale University Press, the book chronicles the lives of African-American women in the urban north in the decades leading up to the Civil War.
A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Armstrong Dunbar received her master's and doctoral degrees from Columbia University and joined the UD faculty in 2000. Among her honors, she received UD's General University Research Grant and Paul R. Jones Teaching Grant and the Mellon Junior Faculty Career Enhancement Fellowship.
Photo by Kathy Atkinson