Judith Byfield has been named the Stephen ’59 and Madeline ’60 Anbinder Professor at Cornell University. She is a professor of history and holds appointments with the Africana Studies and Research Center and the feminist, gender, and sexuality studies program. She has conducted extensive research on women’s social and economic history in Nigeria and authored A Great Upheaval: Women and Nation in Post-War Nigeria (Ohio University Press, 2021).
Dr. Byfield completed her undergraduate education at Dartmouth College. She received her master’s degree and Ph.D. from Columbia University.
Nikki Hoskins has been named assistant professor in religion and ecology at Harvard Divinity School. She comes to her new role from the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania, where she has taught as an assistant professor of theology and religious studies for the past three years. Her research focuses on Christian histories of colonial, race, and environmental domination.
Dr. Hoskins holds a bachelor’s degree in religious studies from Spelman College in Atlanta, a master of divinity degree from Harvard University, and a Ph.D. in religion and society from Drew University in New Jersey.
Edda Fields-Black has been appointed director of the Humanities Center at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She has served as a faculty member within the university’s department of history for over two decades. Earlier this year, she published her third book, COMBEE: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War (Oxford University Press, 2024).
Dr. Fields-Black holds a bachelor’s degree in English and history from Emory University in Atlanta and a master’s degree in history from the University of Florida. She earned a second master’s degree and Ph.D. in history from the University of Pennsylvania.
Shawn O. Utsey has been promoted from acting chair to permanent chair of the department of African American studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. Dr. Utsey been a faculty member with the university for the past 20 years, holding joint appointments in the department of psychology and and the department of African American studies.
Dr. Utsey holds a Ph.D. in counseling psychology from Fordham University in New York.
Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw has been named the inaugural faculty director of the Arthur Ross Gallery at the University of Pennsylvania. A member of the university’s faculty for nearly 20 years, she currently serves as the Class of 1940 Bicentennial Term Professor in the department of art history in the School of Arts and Sciences. She has authored numerous publications on American art, including her recent book The Art of Remembering: Essays on African American Art and History (Duke University Press, 2024).
Dr. Shaw holds a bachelor’s degree in art history from the University of California, Santa Barbara and a master’s degree in art history from Stanford University, where she was the first African American to ever receive a doctorate in art history.
