Woodruff, Nan Elizabeth 1949-

PERSONAL:

Born August 25, 1949, in Anniston, AL; daughter of Wallace Green (in sales) and Virginia (Parks) Woodruff.

ADDRESSES:

Home—1121 S. Garner St., State College, PA 16801. Office—Department of History, Pennsylvania State University, 108 Weaver, University Park, PA 16802. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer. University of Illinois, Champaign- Urbana, assistant editor of Booker T. Washington Papers, 1977-78; College of Charleston, Charleston, Charleston, SC, assistant professor of history, 1979- 88; Pennsylvania State University, University Park, assistant professor, 1988-92, associate professor, 1992- 2004, professor of history, 2004—, member of advisory board for George and Ann Richards Center for the Study of the Civil War Era, 2000—. University of Arkansas, Donovan Distinguished Lecturer, 1992; Tulane University, Andrew Mellon Lecturer, 1998; Delta State University, Crandall Lecturer, 2003; University of Memphis, member of advisory board for Benjamin Hooks Institute for Social Change, 2005—; guest lecturer at other institutions, including Hendrix College, University of Nevada, Reno, St. Antony's College, Oxford, Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, Duke University, Iowa State University, and University of California, Irvine; conference participant; public speaker. UNESCO, national coordinator of Breaking the Silence Transatlantic Slave Trade Education Project, 2003—, and speaker at Youth Forum of the Americas and European Youth Forum; consultant for television and radio documentary programs, including "The Great Depression Series," broadcast as part of the series The American Experience, Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), 1992; Cadillac Desert and Last Oasis, Pacifica Films, 1997; and Behind the Veil: The South during the Age of Jim Crow, PBS, 2002. Exhibitions: Organizer of "Black Charleston in Slavery and Freedom," a photographic exhibit, Charleston Art Museum, Charleston, SC, and Schomburg Collection, New York, NY, 1980; and "Esau Jenkins: A Retrospective View of the Man and His Times," Avery Institute for African American History and Culture in the Lowcountry, 1984.

MEMBER:

Organization of American Historians, Historical Society, American Historical Association, Southern Historical Association (member of executive committee, 2006-09), St. George Tucker Society.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Grants from American Philosophical Society, 1982, 1985, 1987; fellow, South Carolina Committee for the Humanities, 1983; American Council of Learned Societies, grant, 1983, fellowship, 1986-87; grants from National Endowment for the Humanities, 1985, 1987, 2004; Winthrop Rockefeller grant, 1986; Kaiser travel grant, Reuther Labor Archives, 1987; grants from Southern Regional Education Fund, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988; Beveridge grant, American Historical Association, 1988; Smithsonian senior fellow, 1989-90; McLemore Prize, Mississippi Historical Society, 2004, for American Congo: The African American Freedom Struggle in the Delta.

WRITINGS:

As Rare As Rain: Federal Relief in the Great Southern Drought of 1930-31, University of Illinois (Champaign-Urbana, IL), 1985.

American Congo: The African American Freedom Struggle in the Delta, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 2003.

Contributor to books, including Time Longer Than Rope: A Century of African American Activism, edited by Adam Green and Charles Payne, New York University Press (New York, NY), 2003; and The Black Worker: Race and Labor Activism since Emancipation, edited by Eric Arnesen, University of Illinois Press (Urbana, IL). Contributor of articles and reviews to periodicals, including Radical History Review, Agricultural History, Arkansas Historical Quarterly, and Journal of Southern History. Member of editorial board, Arkansas Historical Quarterly, 2000-04, and Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004-05.

SIDELIGHTS:

Nan Elizabeth Woodruff told CA: "I grew up in rural Alexandria, Alabama, during the last decades of segregation and the civil rights movement. I write on topics related to African American history, southern history, human rights, and unfree labor in a global context."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Journal of African American History, summer, 2004, Andrew M. Kaye, review of American Congo: The African American Freedom Struggle in the Delta, p. 282.

Journal of Social History, winter, 2004, Hasan Kwame Jeffries, review of American Congo, p. 534.

Journal of Southern History, November, 2004, Jeannie M. Whayne, review of American Congo, p. 952.