Painter, Nell Irvin 1942–

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Painter, Nell Irvin 1942–

PERSONAL: Born August 2, 1942, in Houston, TX; daughter of Frank Edward (a chemist) and Dona Lolita (a personnel officer; maiden name, McGruder) Irvin. Ethnicity: Black. Education: University of California, Berkeley, B.A., 1964; University of California, Los Angeles, M.A., 1967; Harvard University, Ph.D., 1974; also attended University of Bordeaux, 1962–63, and University of Ghana, 1965–66. Politics: Democrat.

ADDRESSES: Office—Department of History, 129 Dickinson Hall, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544-1017. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Oxford University Press, 198 Madison Ave., New York, NY 10016. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, assistant professor, 1974–77, associate professor of American and Afro-American history, 1978–80; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, professor of history, 1980–88; Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, professor of history, 1988–91, acting director of Program in Afro-American Studies, 1990–91, Edwards Professor of American History, 1991–2000, director of Program in African American Studies, 1997–2000, professor emeritus, 2000–. Resident associate of Afro-American studies at W.E.B. Du Bois Institute, Harvard University, 1977–78; Russell Sage visiting professor of history at Hunter College of the City University of New York, 1985–86.

MEMBER: PEN American Center, Organization of American Historians (president, 2007), American Historical Association, Society of American Historians (councilor), American Antiquarian Society, American Studies Association, American Council of Learned Societies, American Academy of Political and Social Science (member of executive board, 2003–), Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History, Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, Association of Black Women Historians, National Book Foundation, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Social Science Research Council, Institute for Southern Studies, Southern Historical Association (president, 2007), Southern Regional Council, Phi Beta Kappa.

AWARDS, HONORS: Coretta Scott King Award, American Association of University Women, 1969; Ford Foundation fellowship, 1971–72; American Council of Learned Societies fellowship, 1976–77; Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History fellowship, Harvard University, 1976–77; Radcliffe Institute fellowship, 1976–77; National Humanities Center fellowship in American history, 1978–79; Guggenheim fellow, 1982–83; Graduate Society Medal, Radcliffe College Alumnae, 1984; Candace Award, National Coalition of One Hundred Black Women, 1986; Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences fellowship, 1988–89; Alumnus of the Year Award, Black Alumni of the University of California, Berkeley, 1989; Kate B. and Hall J. Peterson fellowship, American Antiquarian Society, 1991; National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship, 1992–93; service award, Association of Black Princeton University Alumni, 1998; Roelker Mentorship Award, American Historical Association, 2000; honorary doctorates from Wesleyan University, Dartmouth University, State University of New York at New Paltz, and Yale University.

WRITINGS:

Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas after Reconstruction, Knopf (New York, NY), 1977.

The Narrative of Hosea Hudson: His Life as a Negro Communist in the South, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1979.

The Progressive Era, Knopf (New York, NY), 1984.

Standing at Armageddon: The United States, 1877–1919, Norton (New York, NY), 1987.

Soul Murder and Slavery, Baylor University Press (Waco, TX), 1995.

Sojourner Truth: A Life, a Symbol, Norton (New York, NY), 1996.

(Editor) Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Bondswoman of Olden Time, with a History of Her Labors and Correspondence Drawn from Her Book of Life, Penguin Books (New York, NY), 1998.

(Editor) Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Penguin Books (New York, NY), 2000.

Southern History across the Color Line, University of North Carolina Press (Chapel Hill, NC), 2002.

Creating Black Americans: African American History and Its Meanings, 1619 to the Present, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2006.

Also author of Disquieting Portents: The United States, 1886–1919. Member of editorial board, "Gender and American Culture" and "Southern Classics" series and Encyclopedia of American Cultural and Intellectual History. Contributor to periodicals, including New England Quarterly and Nation.

WORK IN PROGRESS: The History of White People and Personal Beauty: Biology or Culture?, both for W.W. Norton.

SIDELIGHTS: Nell Irvin Painter is a historian who has won critical acclaim for her many books, most of which focus on African American history. Her first publication, Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas after Reconstruction, explores the relocation of Southern African Americans to Kansas in the 1880s. Theodore Rosengarten, reviewing Exodusters for the New Republic, stated that Painter "proves, succinctly and beyond a doubt, that the initiative among [some African Americans] to leave the South [for Kansas] was rooted in everyday oppression. Many historians have worked with the same kind of evidence; yet, Painter's presentation of 'The Economics of Oppression' is startlingly fresh. She exposes the heart and sword of post-Reconstruction rural tyranny—the contract between landlord and farmer." Calling Exodusters an "eloquent and moving book" in a review for the Washington Post Book World, David Brion Davis concluded: "Painter admirably succeeds in portraying the great exodus of 1879 as a collective black response to blasted hopes, not as the response of ignorant folk to unscrupulous speculators and agitators." In an article for the New York Times Book Review, David Herbert Donald commented that Painter's book is "one of the first serious historical studies produced by a young black scholar influenced by the doctrines of black nationalism and black separatism that became current in the late 1960s…. 'Exodusters' certainly succeeds in its larger purpose of challenging students of the Afro-American experience to re-examine grass-roots black protest movements."

Painter's next book, The Narrative of Hosea Hudson: His Life as a Negro Communist in the South, is a compilation of oral memoirs of a black union organizer who allied himself with the Communist Party. Reviewing the book for the Nation, Benita Eisler praised it as "a modern epic, tracing a twentieth-century hero's road from bondage to freedom…. Moving, fearful and funny, Hudson and Painter's Narrative is as valuable an American life as has ever been wrested from anonymity." Though the work is ostensibly comprised of Hudson's oral memoirs, Painter faced the monumental task of organizing hundreds of hours of disjointed stories on recorded tape into a meaningful whole. The author admitted to Sarah Crichton in Publishers Weekly that the project wore her out. "I feel like I've added 50 years to my own [life]," she said. "I OD'd on sound." Her efforts were key to the success of her book, though; as Eisler wrote: "Painter is an ideal collaborator in this complex enterprise. Shaping several years of taped interviews into a coherent dramatic narrative is, first of all, an impressive literary achievement." In an essay for the New York Review of Books, Theodore Draper made a similar observation: "[Painter] coaxed a story out of Hudson that belongs with the best of black—or white—autobiographies."

In Southern History across the Color Line, Painter brings together a collection of her essays that seek new perspectives on history. Rather than writing only about white people or only about African Americans, she "investigates class, the body, cultural symbolism, and sexuality from a materialist perspective, with many of her interpretations and insights illuminated by what she characterizes as her interdisciplinary 'auto-education,'" explained Debra Walker King in the Southern Literary Journal. King had particular praise for the essay "Soul Murder and Slavery: Toward a Fully Loaded Cost Accounting," in which Painter reflects on the physical and psychological politics of slavery. Overall, the book provides insights on the effects of widespread discrimination and inequality on the collective psyche of the American South. Reviewing Southern History across the Color Line for Western Journal of Black Studies, Johnny D. Jones stated that the book serves as "a great tool for reference for future generations to gain a more vivid and authentic perspective of the South and its troubled and blemished past."

Painter covered a broad sweep of history in her 2006 book Creating Black Americans: African American History and Its Meanings, 1619 to the Present. In it, she offers a history of the changing political, social, and economic status of African Americans through the centuries, beginning in 1619 and continuing into the hip-hop era. Painter also comments on African Americans' perceptions and interpretations of their changing fortunes. Intended for a more general audience than some of her other books, this one lacks the "exceptional prose [and] critical analysis" of her earlier works, according to Library Journal contributor Sherri L. Barnes; however, the same reviewer praised the liberal use of artistic works from famous and obscure African American artists to illustrate her history, as did Vernon Ford, who in his Booklist review called it a "beautiful and well-researched book."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, September 15, 2005, Vernon Ford, review of Creating Black Americans: African American History and Its Meanings, 1619 to the Present, p. 22.

Journal of Women's History, autumn, 2005, Susan K. Cahn, review of Southern History across the Color Line, p. 169.

Library Journal, October 1, 2005, Sherri L. Barnes, review of Creating Black Americans, p. 94.

Nation, January 5-12, 1980, Benita Eisler, review of The Narrative of Hosea Hudson: His Life as a Negro Communist in the South, p. 22.

New Republic, February 12, 1977, Theodore Rosengarten, review of Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas after Reconstruction.

Newsweek, January 17, 1977, review of Exodusters, p. 81.

New York Review of Books, May 9, 1985, Theodore Draper, review of The Narrative of Hosea Hudson, p. 32.

New York Times Book Review, January 30, 1977, David Herbert Donald, review of Exodusters, p. 7; November 18, 1979, Joe Klein, review of The Narrative of Hosea Hudson, p. 13; October 4, 1987, Charles Tilly, review of Standing at Armageddon: The United States, 1817–1919, and interview with Nell Irvin Painter, p. 13.

Publishers Weekly, November 5, 1979, Sarah Crichton, interview with Nell Irvin Painter; September 12, 2005, review of Creating Black Americans, p. 56.

Southern Literary Journal, spring, 2005, Debra Walker King, review of Southern History across the Color Line, p. 145.

Washington Post Book World, March 6, 1977, David Brion Davis, review of Exodusters.

Western Journal of Black Studies, spring, 2004, Johnny D. Jones, review of Southern History across the Color Line, p. 332.