Erin D. Chapman, PhD

Black Feminist
Historian

About

Dr. Erin D. Chapman is a scholar of race and gender in the 20th-century U.S. As an Associate Professor of History at George Washington University, Dr. Chapman teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in African American history. She serves the academy as President of the Board of Trustees of the Journal of Women's History. The Ford Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the American Council of Learned Societies have supported her research. She is the author of Prove It On Me: New Negroes, Sex and Popular Culture in the 1920s (Oxford UP, 2012) and a range of book chapters and articles.

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).

Expertise

Race and Sexuality in U.S. Culture

Dr. Chapman's expertise lies in exploring the intersections of race and sexuality within American culture. Her work examines how cultural norms and representations of race and sexuality have evolved and intersected, particularly focusing on the experiences of African Americans. This includes analyzing cultural products, such as literature, film, and music, to understand how they reflect and shape societal attitudes toward race and sexuality. Her research in this area is well-supported by various prestigious foundations and institutions, reflecting the significance and impact of her scholarship.

Gender Politics in the 20th Century Black Freedom Movement

Dr. Chapman delves into the gender dynamics within the 20th-century Black freedom movement, highlighting the roles and contributions of Black women in the fight for civil rights. Her work brings to light the often-overlooked aspects of gender politics, providing a nuanced understanding of how gender intersected with race in the activism and political strategies of the era. She investigates how Black women navigated and challenged racial and gender oppression, contributing to broader social and political changes.

African American Studies

As a scholar in African American Studies, Dr. Chapman focuses on the historical and cultural experiences of African-Americans. Her research spans various aspects of African American life, from the Harlem Renaissance to contemporary issues. By examining historical events, cultural movements, and key figures within African American history, she provides insights into the complexities and diversities of African American experiences. Her teaching and research emphasize the importance of understanding African American history as a critical component of American history.

20th-century U.S. History, with a Focus on Race and Gender

Dr. Chapman's expertise extends to the broader field of 20th-century U.S. history at the intersections of race and gender. She explores how racial and gender identities and politics have shaped, and been shaped by, significant events and movements throughout the century. Her work includes examining how legislation, social movements, and cultural shifts have impacted the lives of African Americans and women. This comprehensive approach allows her to provide a deep and multifaceted understanding of American history.

American Radical: Lorraine Hansberry and the Struggle to Save the United States

American Radical: Lorraine Hansberry and the Struggle to Save the United States

American Radical:
Lorraine Hansberry and the Struggle to Save the United States

“Let no Negro artist who thinks himself deserving of the title take pen to paper—or, for that matter, body to dance or voice to speech or song—if in doing so the content of that which he presents or performs suggests to the nations of the world that our people do not yet languish under privation and hatred and brutality and political oppression in every state of the forty-eight. The truth demands its own equals. Therefore, let an America that respects its name and aspirations in the world anticipate the novels and plays and poetry of Negro writers that must now go forth to an eager world. For we are going to tell the truth from all its sides, including what is still the bitter epic of the black man in this most hostile nation.”

— Lorraine Hansberry, 1959

Book Coming Soon

Reflections on a Publicity Photo

Following the photographer’s suggestion, Lorraine sat at the little desk that held her modern typewriter, the tool of her trade, her mouthpiece. The place she sat when feeling sad or unsure, or just so full of feeling and words she had to let them out. It was strange to sit there in her best clothes and jewelry, as if she really was this sophisticated matron. But it was important, she felt in that moment, to heed all her mother’s admonishments about being a lady and representing the family and the race well. Finally, she was a success. She could make Nannie proud. So she sat, lit a cigarette, held it between her first and second fingers, and lifted it as she often did while thinking about the next sentence or contemplating her loneliness. She took a puff, blew it out, turned to the camera, and tried to smile.

Prove It On Me: New Negroes, Sex, and Popular Culture in the 1920s

Prove It On Me: New Negroes, Sex, and Popular Culture in the 1920s

Prove It On Me: New Negroes, Sex, and Popular Culture in the 1920s

In Prove It On Me, Erin D. Chapman explores the gender and sexual politics of this modern racial ethos and reveals the constraining and exploitative underside of the New Negro era's vaunted liberation and opportunities. Chapman's cultural history documents the effects on black women of the intersection of primitivism, New Negro patriarchal aspirations, and the early twentieth-century consumer culture. As U.S. society invested in the New Negroes, turning their expressions and race politics into entertaining commodities in a sexualized, primitivist popular culture, the New Negroes invested in the idea of black womanhood as a pillar of stability against the unsettling forces of myriad social and racial transformations. And both groups used black women's bodies and identities to "prove" their own modern notions and new identities. Chapman's analysis brings together advertisements selling the blueswoman to black and white consumers in a "sex-race marketplace," the didactic preachments of New Negro reformers advocating a conservative gender politics of "race motherhood," and the words of the New Negro women authors and migrants who boldly or implicitly challenged these dehumanizing discourses. Prove It On Me investigates the uses made of black women's bodies in 1920s popular culture and racial politics and black women's opportunities to assert their own modern, racial identities.

Recent Publications

  • Rape Fantasies and Other Assaults

    Black Women’s Sexuality And Racial Redemption On Film

  • Staging Gendered Radicalism at the Height of the US Cold War

    A Raisin in the Sun and Lorraine Hansberry's Vision of Freedom

Get in touch

Let's explore how to collaborate, share knowledge, and inspire change together.