Erica Armstrong Dunbar Named PAAH Director

Erica Armstrong Dunbar, an associate professor of history at the University of Delaware, has been named the first Director of the Library Company’s Program in African American History. Dunbar specializes in 19th-century African American and Women’s History. She received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania and a doctoral degree from Columbia University. Her book A Fragile Freedom: African American Women and Emancipation in the Antebellum City from Yale University Press is based in part on research she conducted in the Library Company collections as a fellow.

The Program in African American History, established in 2007 with a grant from The Albert M. Greenfield Foundation, brings together scholars and interested members of the public to explore every aspect of the experience of people of African descent in the Americas from the beginnings of European colonization through 1900. Curator of African American History Phil Lapsansky, who has been with the Library Company for forty years, has made significant contributions to the development of the larger discipline over that time, as well as helping to shape the Library Company’s acquisitions, exhibitions, and programming. Mr. Lapsansky will retire in 2012.

Professor Dunbar will provide direction for the fellowships, conferences, exhibitions, publications, public programming, teacher training, and acquisitions through which the Library Company advances scholarship in African American History and shares this knowledge with the broader public.