Ethnic Studies Home

The Faculty
 • Gloria Cuadraz, Ph.D.
 • Duku Anokye, Ph.D.
 • Manuel Avalos, Ph.D
 • Luis Cabrera, Ph.D.
 • Shari Collins-Chobanian, Ph.D.
 • Alejandra Elenes, Ph.D
 • Kristin Koptiuch, Ph.D.
 • Ime Ukpanah, Ph.D.

Jennifer Dorsey completed her Ph.D. at Georgetown University in 2002. Her research and teaching interests include Colonial and Revolutionary America, African American History and the Atlantic World from conquest to the end of the Atlantic slave trade. In addition to classes in the history of colonial America, the American Revolution, and themes in the history of the Early Republic, Prof. Dorsey teaches comparative history, including “The Atlantic World, 1400-1888” and “The Atlantic World in the Age of Revolution,” and is interested in developing a new course that examines the meaning of race in Early America for the newly approved Ethnic Studies major.

Professor Dorsey is revising her dissertation into a publishable manuscript tentatively titled Black Freedom and the Transformation of Early National Maryland. Her work explains how Maryland’s first generation of free African Americans played a pivotal role in shaping the economy and society of rural Maryland in the first 50-years after the American Revolution. In June-July 2005 Prof. Dorsey participated in the NEH sponsored Seminar “Roots: African Dimensions of the History and Culture of the Americas” at the University of Virginia. The Roots Seminar afforded her an exceptional opportunity to re-conceptualize her study of rural African American community development from an Africanist perspective.

Before coming to ASU Prof. Dorsey was an Assistant Professor of History at DeSales University in Allentown, Pennsylvania (2002-2003). In 2003 she was awarded the National Historic and Public Records Commission's post-doctoral Fellowship in Documentary Editing. Her NHPRC Fellowship took her to The University of North Carolina-Greensboro where she worked with award-winning historian Loren Schweninger and the staff of The Race and Slavery Petitions Project (2003-2004).