Allyson Hobbs Biography

Dr. Allyson Hobbs is an Associate Professor of American History at Stanford University, where she also serves as the Director of African and African American Studies and the Kleinheinz Family University Fellow in Undergraduate Education. She is a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians and a contributing writer for The New Yorker.com. "Hobbs offers a unique perspective on an often-overlooked occurrence, and the outcome is both interesting and groundbreaking." She emphasizes the sense of loss that passing causes, claiming that many of those left behind are just as grieved and devastated as those who leave. Hobbs challenges some of the most long-held conceptions about racial identification in American society by spinning safe assumptions on their heads." Hobbs' first book, A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life, was released by Harvard University Press in 2014 and looks at the phenomena of racial passing in America from the late eighteenth century to the present. A Chosen Exile earned the Frederick Jackson Turner Prize for the best first book in American history from the Organization of American Historians and the Lawrence Levine Prize for an outstanding book in American cultural history from the Lawrence Levine Foundation. In addition, the book was named a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice, a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of 2014, The Root's "Best 15 Nonfiction Books by Black Authors in 2014," a featured book in the New York Times Book Review Paperback Row in 2016, and a Paris Review "What Our Writers Are Reading This Summer" Selection in 2017. Hobbs explores the historical legacy of prejudice and how it is still felt now in her lectures. She has been on C-SPAN, MSNBC, and National Public Radio, as well as giving a TEDx lecture at Stanford. CNN.com, Slate, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, the BBC World Service, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and The Christian Science Monitor have all highlighted her work. C-SPAN, MSNBC, and National Public Radio have all featured her. Hobbs is currently working on two books: To Tell the Terrible, about the collective memory of sexual violence among generations of black women, and Nowhere to Run: African American Travel in Twentieth-Century America, about the humiliation and indignities, as well as the joy, exhilaration, and freedom that African American motorists experienced on the road. Mid-century American pleasures—getting on the road, traveling the nation, and enjoying the freedom to drive one's own car—were out of reach for Black drivers due to Jim Crow laws and local customs. Nowhere to Run will delve into the turbulent history and uncertain future of African-American migrants in America. Hobbs received a magna cum laude from Harvard University and a distinction from the University of Chicago for her Ph.D. The Ford Foundation, the Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research, and Stanford's Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity have all awarded her fellowships. Hobbs offers courses on American identity, African American history, African American women's history, and American history and culture in the twentieth century.

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