Shatema Threadcraft, associate professor of gender and sexuality studies at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, received two awards from the American Political Science Association for her new book The Labors of Resurrection: Black Women, Necromancy, and Morrisonian Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2025). The monograph received the 2026 Ralph J. Bunche Award, which honors the best book in political science that explores the phenomenon of ethnic and cultural pluralism, and the 2026 Victoria Schuck Award, which honors the best book published on women and politics.
The Labors of Resurrection, Dr. Threadcraft’s second book, examines the phenomenon of Black femicide as well as how Ida B. Wells, Mamie Till Bradley, Clementine Barfield, Barbara Smith, Margaret Prescod, and Toni Morrison have confronted premature Black death and made transformative democratic interventions in response to those deaths.
Dr. Threadcraft’s first monograph, Intimate Justice: The Black Female Body and the Body of Politic (Oxford University Press, 2016), also won several awards, including honors from the National Women’s Studies Association, the National Conference of Black Political Scientists, and the American Political Science Association.
Dr. Threadcraft is a graduate of Harvard University, where she majored in biology. She holds a master’s degree in philosophy, policy, and social value from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. in political science from Yale University. Before joining Vanderbilt, Dr. Threadcraft taught at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and Rutgers University in New Jersey.
