George and Ann RichardsCivil War Era Center

Dr. Abena Boakyewa-Ansah is a historian of US history with a specialized interest in Black women’s worlds, lives, and ideas of freedom in the Civil War era. A first-generation Afro-Caribbean and Black British scholar, she began her work at the University of Edinburgh, studying with Civil War historian David Silkenat. Her undergraduate thesis became her first publication in 2017, “Crafted ‘By Their Own Hands:’ The African American Religious Experience in Union-Occupied North Carolina, 1862-1865,” in The North Carolina Historical Review. Abena then attended Vanderbilt University, where she completed her doctorate in history as the last student of Professor Richard Blackett in 2022. Her first manuscript, “Freedom Was Their North Star: Formerly Enslaved Women’s Efforts to Secure and Define Freedom During the American Civil War,” places enslaved women at the forefront of the battle for Black freedom, seeking to recast them as freedom makers rather than passive recipients of freedom. Specializing in Civil War history, Abena developed her research interests in African-American religious history, Black women’s intellectual landscape and feminist ideas, and innovative research methods for diving deeper into the interiority of the enslaved.

Dr. Boakyewa-Ansah is passionate about bridging the gap between academia and the public and so has co-hosted a podcast and community learning groups related to Black women’s Christian history in the US context. Additionally, she developed a curriculum for Metro Nashville K-12 schools on the diverse history of Tennessee, and is a consultant for upcoming African American history and Ethnic Studies AP textbooks. As a research scholar who is also passionate about pedagogy, Dr. Boakyewa-Ansah is currently a Nielsen Early Career Workshop Fellow, has completed a teaching fellowship at Vanderbilt’s Center for Teaching, and an intensive summer teaching residency with the National Humanities Center in 2021.

Education:

PhD., Vanderbilt University, May 2022

Scottish MAhons., University of Edinburgh, 2015