Dorothy Roberts wins ACLS Fellowship for study on interracial marriage
Penn Law professor Dorothy E. Roberts has been awarded an American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Fellowship for her book project, Interracial Marriage and Racial Equality in Chicago, 1937–1967.
The ACLS Fellowship program funds scholars in the humanities and social sciences so they can devote themselves full time to researching and writing a major piece of scholarship.
Roberts is the George A. Weiss University Professor of Law and Sociology, the Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights, and professor of Africana Studies. She is also the 14th Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor, as well as the Director of the Program on Race, Science, and Society.
“Professor Roberts is and has been producing groundbreaking research on race, gender, and the law,” said Wendell Pritchett, Interim Dean of the Law School and Presidential Professor. “This well-deserved award will allow her to advance important scholarship on interracial marriage and politics in America.”
Roberts’s project is a study of the experiences and views of interracial couples in Chicago from 1937 to 1967 in the context of intensifying challenges to the racial order that occurred during that period.
The research is a deeply personal for Roberts because her book uses approximately 500 interviews of interracial couples that her father conducted in Chicago for more than four decades. Her father, who was white, was an anthropologist, and her mother, who was black, was a PhD student in anthropology when Roberts was born.
“It is an honor to receive this fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies,” said Roberts. “The extraordinary archive my father compiled allows for incredible insight into changing race relations and politics in Chicago, as well as an intimate look into how interracial couples understood their own marriages during this period of dramatic social change.”
Roberts is particularly interested in the role intermarriage has played in perpetuating and contesting racial inequality. She says that her father believed that interracial marriage could be a strategy for overcoming racism, but her scholarship doesn’t assume that interracial marriage either hinders or advances racial equality.
Roberts’s previous books include Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-Create Race in the Twenty-First Century, which explores the resurgence of race as a biological category in science, medicine, and biotechnology; Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty; Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare; Frug’s Women and the Law; and Sex, Power, and Taboo: Gender and HIV in the Caribbean and Beyond.
ACLS is a private, nonprofit federation of 72 national scholarly organizations, representing American scholarship in the humanities and related social sciences. In 2013–14, ACLS awarded over $15 million to nearly 300 scholars selected from more than 3,000 applications.
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Roberts named recipient of Fuller Award honoring her achievements for the black community
Penn Law professor Dorothy E. Roberts has been named the recipient of the 2015 Solomon Carter Fuller Award by the American Psychiatric Foundation. The award honors a black citizen who has pioneered in an area which has significantly benefited the quality of life for black people.
Roberts is an acclaimed scholar of race, gender, and the law. She joined the University of Pennsylvania as the 14th Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor with a joint appointment in the Law School and the Departments of Africana Studies and Sociology. She is also the George A. Weiss University Professor of Law and Sociology and the Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights.
“Professor Roberts is one of the nation’s leading scholars on the intersection of race, gender, and the law,” said Wendell Pritchett, Interim Dean of the Law School and Presidential Professor. “At a time when discussions and dialogues about race are critical to our society, her work is vital to understanding and combating racial injustice.”
Most recently, Roberts’s book Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-Create Race in the Twenty-First Century explored the resurgence of race as a biological category in science, medicine, and biotechnology, and the implications for health inequities and social policy.
Her other books include Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty;Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare; Frug’s Women and the Law; and Sex, Power, and Taboo: Gender and HIV in the Caribbean and Beyond.
“I’m very honored to receive the Fuller Award,” said Roberts. “There’s much that still needs to be done to end racial injustice in America, and I hope this recognition by the American Psychiatric Association shows the potential for scholars from different disciplines to work together to contribute to that struggle.
Roberts will deliver the Fuller Award lecture on May 18 at the American Psychiatric Association’s Annual Meeting in Toronto, Canada.
The Fuller Award is named for Dr. Solomon Carter Fuller, the nation’s first black psychiatrist. Born in Liberia in 1872, Fuller graduated from Boston University Medical School and worked as a pathologist at the Westborough State Hospital for the Insane. In 1919, he began teaching pathology at Boston University Medical School, and he worked there for next 34 years. Fuller died in his Boston home in 1953.