Brenda Stevenson

Brenda Stevenson is the Nickoll Family Endowed Chair in the department of history and a professor of African American studies. Her work centers on the intersections of race and gender, with a particular interest in the comparative, historical experiences of women, family, and community across racial and ethnic lines.

Stevenson is a social historian whose work focuses on gender, race, family and social conflict in America and the Atlantic World from the colonial period through the late 20th century. She has conducted extensive research on the dynamics of family and community in the American South during the era of slavery, as well as studied the 1992 Los Angeles uprising (also known as the Los Angeles riots). 

She is the author of several books, including “The Contested Murder of Latasha Harlins: Justice, Gender, and the Origins of the L.A. Riots,” the definitive history of the Latasha Harlins case and its role in the riots. Her latest publication is "What Sorrows Labour in My Parents' Breast?: A History of the Enslaved Black Family."