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Allyson Hobbs

Assistant Professor of American History

E-mail: ahobbs@stanford.edu

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At Stanford Since 2007

Ph.D., University of Chicago, June 2008; B.A., Harvard University, magna cum laude, June 1997

Bio Sketch

Allyson Hobbs is an assistant professor of American history.  She received a B.A. from Harvard and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.  Her doctoral dissertation examined the phenomenon of racial passing in the United States from the moment when passing became a problem in the late eighteenth century to the moment when it reportedly “passed out” in the 1950s.  Her study makes an effort to better understand African American group identity and racial affinity by bringing into focus those who disclaimed it.  She focuses on 19th- and early 20th-century American history and African American social and cultural history.  Her research interests include racial mixture, migration and urbanization, and the intersections of race, class and gender.

Selected Fellowships and Awards

  • Ford Foundation Diversity Dissertation Fellowship, 2007 (declined)
  • University of Notre Dame, Erskine A. Peters Dissertation Year Fellowship Finalist, 2007 (declined)
  • University of Chicago, Center for the Study for Race Politics and Culture Research Travel Grant, 2007
  • University of Chicago, Doolittle-Harrison Fellowship, 2006
  • University of Chicago, Freehling Travel Grant, 2006
  • University of Chicago, Cinema and Media Studies Travel Grant, 2006
  • Von Holst Prize Lectureship in History, 2005-2006

Publications

Conference Papers

  • “A Most Respectable Looking Gentleman and a Good Wife: Examining the Meanings of the Performances of Ellen Craft,” Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, June 2008
  • “Boundaries Lost and Found: The Meaning of Racial Passing in the Early Civil Rights Era,” American Historical Association, January 2007