Marcia Chatelain | |
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Born | 1979 (age 45–46) |
Awards | Pulitzer Prize for History (2021) |
Academic background | |
Education | |
Doctoral advisor | Mari Jo Buhle |
Academic work | |
Discipline | History,African American Studies |
Institutions | University of Pennsylvania Georgetown University |
Marcia Chatelain (born 1979) is an American academic who serves as the Penn Presidential Compact Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania . In 2021,she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for History for her book Franchise:The Golden Arches in Black America (2020),for which she also won the James Beard Award for Writing in 2022. Chatelain was the first black woman to win the latter award. [1] [2]
She is also the creator of the Ferguson Syllabus social media campaign and the author of South Side Girls:Growing Up in the Great Migration (2015).
Chatelain was born in 1979 in Chicago,Illinois. Raised in Chicago,she attended St. Ignatius College Prep. [3] [4]
She graduated from the University of Missouri in 2001,with degrees in journalism and religious studies. She then worked as a Resident Scholar at the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation. [5] Chatelain received her A.M. and Ph.D. in American Civilization from Brown University,graduating in 2008,and was awarded the University of California,Santa Barbara's Black Studies Dissertation Fellowship. [6] [5] Chatelain worked as the Reach for Excellence Assistant Professor of Honors and African American Studies at the University of Oklahoma's Honors College,before becoming a Provost's Distinguished Associate Professor of History and African American Studies at Georgetown University. [5]
In 2014,following the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson,Missouri,Chatelain mobilized other scholars on Twitter to talk about what was happening in Ferguson with their students and contribute to a crowdsourced reading list. The result became known as the #FergusonSyllabus. Its success has led to other crowdsourced syllabi to respond to national tragedies. [7] [8] In 2016, The Chronicle of Higher Education named Chatelain a Top Influencer in academics,in recognition of the success of #FergusonSyllabus. [6] [5]
In 2017,Chatelain contributed to the Undisclosed podcast as a resident historian. [5] As of August 2020 [update] ,she hosted the Slate podcast The Waves on feminism,gender,and popular culture. [9]
Chatelain has published two books:South Side Girls:Growing Up in the Great Migration (Duke University Press,2015),about the history of Chicago's Great Migration through the lens of black girls [10] and Franchise:The Golden Arches in Black America (Liveright/W. W. Norton,2020) about the history of the relationship between civil rights and the fast food industry. [3] [11]
Chatelain has received awards from the Ford Foundation,the American Association of University Women,and the German Marshall Fund of the United States. [5] She has won teaching awards at Georgetown University,where she serves on the Working Group on Slavery,Memory,and Reconciliation. [9] In 2019,Chatelain was named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow. She also served as an Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fellow at the New America Foundation. [9]
In 2023,Chatelain was nominated to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. [12]
Chatelain is a 2025 Guggenheim Fellow. [13]
In 2021,Chatelain was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for History for her book Franchise:The Golden Arches in Black America . [15] For her work on Franchise,Chatelain also received the 2022 James Beard Foundation Award,the 2021 Hagley Prize in Business History,the 2021 Organization of American Historians' Lawrence W. Levine Award,the 2021 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Nonfiction,the 2019–2021 Business History Review 's Alfred and Fay Chandler Book Award,and the 2020 Hooks National Book Award. [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21]