Tiffany Ruby Patterson
Associate Professor of African American and Diaspora Studies
Associate Professor of History; Director of Undergraduate Studies in AADS
Professor Tiffany Ruby Patterson is Associate Professor of African American and Diaspora Studies, and History, at Vanderbilt University. She has published Zora Neale Hurston and a History of Southern Life (Temple University Press, 2005), a study of early twentieth century black communities set within the history of all-black towns, maroon societies, and nationalist traditions. She is also Associate Editor of the 16 Volume series Black Women in United States History. Her work on conceptualizing the diaspora includes “Diaspora and Beyond: The Promise and Limitations of Black Transnational Studies in the United States” in Les diasporas dans le monde contemporain Un état des lieux edited by W. Berthomiere and C. Chivallon. (Paris, Pessac, Editions Karthala and Maison des Sciences de l’Homme d’Aquitaine, 2006) and, co-authored with Robin D.G. Kelley, “Unfinished Migrations: Reflections on the African Diaspora and the Making of the Modern World,” African Studies Review (April, 2000, vol.11-45). She has also co-authored, with Tracy Sharpley-Whiting, “The Conumdrum of Geography, or Diaspora Studies in Europe” in Black Europe and the African Diaspora, Darlene Clark Hine, Trica Keaton and Stephen Smalls eds. (University of Illinois Press, 2008). Professor Patterson is currently working on a book entitled "Heart in Darkness: Zora Neale Hurston in Haiti."
Specializations
African American and African Diaspora History with emphasis on colonialism and anti-colonial movements, migrations, social history of gender and color, color and class in Afro-American Communities, gender matters in the African Atlantic world, decolonial movements and the moral imaginations of intellectuals in the African Diaspora.