Skip to main content

African American & Diaspora Studies

African American & Diaspora Studies
  2. People
  3. Brandon R. Byrd

Brandon R. Byrd

A headshot of Prof Claudine Taaffe

 

Associate Professor of History
Professor of African American and Diaspora Studies
 Chancellor Faculty Fellow

 

Office: Benson Hall 201

Email: brandon.r.byrd@vanderbilt.edu

Education

  • 2014 Ph.D., Department of History, The University of North Carolina at
    Chapel Hill
  • 2011 M.A., Department of History, The College of William & Mary
  • 2009 B.A., Departmental Honors in History, Davidson College

Specializations

  • United States History; African American History; Cultural and Intellectual History

Biography

I am historian of Black intellectual and social history, with a special focus on the United States and Haiti. I am the author of The Black Republic: African Americans and the Fate of Haiti (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020) and a co-editor of Ideas in Unexpected Places: Reimagining Black Intellectual History (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2022).

Along with these publications, my scholarship has appeared in journals such as Slavery & Abolition, The Journal of African American History, The Journal of Haitian Studies, Modern Intellectual History, and Diplomatic History as well as popular outlets including GQ, and ESPN’s The Undefeated.

Currently, I am completing several research projects including a critical translation of the Haitian intellectual Louis Joseph Janvier and a biography of the U.S. Black emigrationist Benjamin “Pap” Singleton.

In addition to my research and teaching, I am a co-editor of Modern Intellectual History and a co-editor of the Black Lives and Liberation series published by Vanderbilt University Press