Ada Ferrer

Last updated
Ada Ferrer
Born
Nationality Cuban-American
CitizenshipUnited States
Education Vassar College 1984
University of Texas at Austin 1988
University of Michigan 1995
OccupationHistorian
Years active1995 – present
Employer New York University
Notable workFreedom's Mirror: Cuba and Haiti in the Age of Revolution, Cuba: An American History
Awards Frederick Douglass Prize, 2015
Berkshire Conference of Women Historians Book Prize
Pulitzer Prize for History, 2022

Ada Ferrer is a Cuban-American historian. She is Julius Silver Professor of History and Latin American Studies at New York University, and will join the faculty at Princeton University as the Dayton-Stockton Professor of History in July of 2024. [1] She was awarded the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in History for her book Cuba: An American History . [2] [3] [4]

Contents

Early life

She was born in Havana, Cuba, migrated to the United States in 1963, and grew up in West New York, New Jersey. [5] Ferrer holds an AB degree in English from Vassar College, 1984, an MA degree in history from University of Texas at Austin, 1988, and a PhD in history from the University of Michigan, 1995. [6]

Career

She is currently a Julius Silver Professor of History and Latin American Studies at New York University. [7]

She won the 2015 Frederick Douglass Prize for her book Freedom's Mirror: Cuba and Haiti in the Age of Revolution. [8] [9] The book also won the Friedrich Katz, Wesley Logan, and James A. Rawley prizes from the American Historical Association and the Haiti Illumination Prize from the Haitian Studies Association. Ferrer received the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians Book Prize for her book Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation and Revolution 1868–1898, [10] which was shortlisted for the 2022 Cundill Prize. [11]

She is a 2018 Guggenheim Fellow. [12]

Bibliography

Books

Essays and reporting

Critical studies and reviews of Ferrer's work

Freedom's mirror
Insurgent Cuba

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ten Years' War</span> 1868–1878 Cuban uprising against Spanish rule

The Ten Years' War, also known as the Great War and the War of '68, was part of Cuba's fight for independence from Spain. The uprising was led by Cuban-born planters and other wealthy natives. On 10 October 1868, sugar mill owner Carlos Manuel de Céspedes and his followers proclaimed independence, beginning the conflict. This was the first of three liberation wars that Cuba fought against Spain, the other two being the Little War (1879–1880) and the Cuban War of Independence (1895–1898). The final three months of the last conflict escalated with United States involvement, leading to the Spanish–American War.

David Hackett Fischer is University Professor of History Emeritus at Brandeis University. Fischer's major works have covered topics ranging from large macroeconomic and cultural trends to narrative histories of significant events to explorations of historiography.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William S. McFeely</span> American historian (1930–2019)

William Shield McFeely was an American historian known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1981 biography of Ulysses S. Grant, as well as his contributions to a reevaluation of the Reconstruction era, and for advancing the field of African-American history. He retired as the Abraham Baldwin Professor of the Humanities emeritus at the University of Georgia in 1997, and was affiliated with Harvard University since 2006.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David W. Blight</span> American historian

David William Blight is the Sterling Professor of History, of African American Studies, and of American Studies and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University. Previously, Blight was a professor of History at Amherst College, where he taught for 13 years. He has won several awards, including the Bancroft Prize and Frederick Douglass Prize for Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, and the Pulitzer Prize and Lincoln Prize for Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. In 2021, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Güines</span> Municipality in Mayabeque, Cuba

Güines is a municipality and town in the Mayabeque Province of Cuba. It is located 50 km (31 mi) southeast of Havana, next to the Mayabeque River. It is the most populated town, but not the capital, of its province.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anténor Firmin</span> Haitian French anthropologist, philosopher, journalist, and politician (1850–1911)

Joseph Auguste Anténor Firmin, better known as Anténor Firmin, was a Haitian barrister and philosopher, pioneering anthropologist, journalist, and politician. Firmin is best known for his book De l'égalité des races humaines, which was published in 1885 as a rebuttal to French writer Count Arthur de Gobineau's work Essai sur l'inégalité des races humaines. Gobineau's book asserted the superiority of the Aryan race and the inferiority of Blacks and other people of color. Firmin's book argued the opposite, that "all men are endowed with the same qualities and the same faults, without distinction of color or anatomical form. The races are equal". He was marginalized at the time for his beliefs that all human races were equal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ana Betancourt</span> Cuban revolutionary

Ana Betancourt was a Cuban woman who took a leading role in the war of independence from Spain. She is a national heroine in Cuba.

Racism in Cuba refers to racial discrimination in Cuba. In Cuba, dark skinned Afro-Cubans are the only group on the island referred to as black while lighter skinned, mixed race, Afro-Cuban mulattos are often not characterized as fully black or fully white. Race conceptions in Cuba are unique because of its long history of racial mixing and appeals to a "raceless" society. The Cuban census reports that 65% of the population is white while foreign figures report an estimate of the number of whites at anywhere from 40 to 45 percent. This is likely due to the self-identifying mulattos who are sometimes designated officially as white. A common myth in Cuba is that every Cuban has at least some African ancestry, influenced by historical mestizaje nationalism. Given the high number of immigrants from Europe in the 20th century, this is far from true. Several pivotal events have impacted race relations on the island. Using the historic race-blind nationalism first established around the time of independence, Cuba has navigated the abolition of slavery, the suppression of black clubs and political parties, the revolution and its aftermath, and the special period.

Vincent Brown is Charles Warren Professor of History, Professor of African and African-American Studies, and Director of the History Design Studio at Harvard University. His research, writing, teaching, and other creative endeavors are focused on the political dimensions of cultural practice in the African Diaspora, with a particular emphasis on the early modern Atlantic world.

Tiya Alicia Miles is an American historian. She is Michael Garvey Professor of History at Harvard University and Radcliffe Alumnae Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She is a public historian, academic historian, and creative writer whose work explores the intersections of African American, Native American and women's histories. Her research includes African American and Native American interrelated and comparative histories ; Black, Native, and U.S. women's histories; and African American and Native American women's literature. She was a 2011 MacArthur Fellow.

Rebecca Jarvis Scott is an American historian, and Charles Gibson Distinguished University Professor of History and Professor of Law, at University of Michigan.

The Wesley Logan Prize is an annual prize given to a historian by the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life & History

The Berkshire Conference of Women Historians Book Prizes are awarded each year by the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians. Nominees must be women normally resident in North America who have published a book in the previous year. One prize recognizes an author's first book that "deals substantially with the history of women, gender, and/or sexuality", and the other prize recognizes "a first book in any field of history that does not focus on the history of women, gender, and/or sexuality."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Manuel de la Cruz y Fernández</span> Cuban writer and journalist (1861–1896)

Manuel de la Cruz y Fernández was a Cuban writer and journalist. He served as editor of El Fígaro, a weekly Cuban magazine, and wrote for several magazines and newspapers in Cuba and abroad. In 1890, he published Episodios de la Revolución Cubana, a collection of first-hand accounts of the Ten Years' War. He also wrote fictional novels including La Hija del Montero and La Hija del Guardiero. De la Cruz died suddenly in 1896 at the age of 34.

Alejandro de la Fuente is an academic and art curator. He is the Robert Woods Bliss Professor of Latin American History and Economics, Professor of African and African American Studies and of History at Harvard University. He is also Director of Afro-Latin American Research Institute at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard. His research focuses on specializes in the study of comparative study of slavery and race relations.

<i>The Common Wind</i> 2018 nonfiction book by Julius S. Scott

The Common Wind: Afro-American Currents in the Age of the Haitian Revolution is a 2018 book by Julius S. Scott, based on his influential but previously unpublished 1986 Duke University doctoral dissertation. The book traces the circulation of news in African diasporic communities in the Caribbean around the time of the Haitian Revolution, and links the "common wind" of shared information to political developments leading to the abolition of slavery in the British and French Caribbean.

<i>Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom</i> 2018 book by David W. Blight

Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom is a 2018 biography of African-American abolitionist Frederick Douglass, written by historian David W. Blight. It was published in 2018 by Simon & Schuster and won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for History.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Victoria Johnson</span> American author and historian

Victoria Johnson is an American author and historian. She is a Professor of Urban Policy and Planning at Hunter College.

Nicole Eustace is an American historian who won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for History, for Covered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America and was a finalist for the 2021 National Book Award for Nonfiction.

Cuba: An American History is a historical book by Ada Ferrer which was published in 2022 by Thorndike Press.

References

  1. "Board approves nine faculty appointments". Princeton University. 2024-03-29. Retrieved 2024-03-30.
  2. "The 2022 Pulitzer Prize Winner in History". pulitzer.org. Retrieved May 10, 2022.
  3. "2022 Pulitzer Prize in History Awarded to NYU's Nicole Eustace and Ada Ferrer". .nyu.edu.
  4. "2022 Pulitzer Prizes in arts and letters go to 'Fat Ham' and 'The Netenyahus'". NPR.org. Retrieved 2022-05-10.
  5. Ferrer, Ada (March 1, 2021). "My Brother's Keeper". The New Yorker. Retrieved March 7, 2021.
  6. "Ada Ferrer, Professor Of History". NYU History Department. Retrieved 2017-07-01.
  7. "Ada Ferrer". www.afrocubaweb.com. Retrieved 2017-06-30.
  8. "Congratulations to Ada Ferrer, Winner of the Frederick Douglass Book Prize | The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History". www.gilderlehrman.org. Yale University. 5 February 2016. Retrieved 30 June 2017.
  9. "NYU professor wins the Frederick Douglass Book Prize". Yale News. November 6, 2015. Retrieved 30 June 2017.
  10. "Berkshire Conference of Women Historians". web.mnstate.edu. Retrieved 30 June 2017.
  11. "US$75k Cundill History Prize shortlist announced". Books+Publishing. 2022-09-26. Retrieved 2022-09-26.
  12. "John Simon Guggenheim Foundation | Ada Ferrer".