Barbara Ransby Elected President of the National Women’s Studies Association

Barbara Ransby, Distinguished Professor of African American studies, gender and women’s studies, and history at the University of Illinois at Chicago was elected president of the National Women’s Studies Association. Her two-year term as president will begin at the conclusion of the association’s annual conference in Montreal in November.

The organization, established in 1977, has more than 2,000 individual and 350 institutional members working in varied specialties across the United States and around the world.

Professor Ransby has been on the faculty at the University of Illinois at Chicago since 1996. She is the author of Eslanda: The Large and Unconventional Life of Mrs. Paul Robeson (Yale University Press, 2013). Professor Ransby also serves as the editor-in-chief of SOULS, a journal of Black politics, culture, and society.

Dr. Ransby is a graduate of Columbia University in New York City. She holds master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Michigan.