Photo by Tamika Moore
Imani Perry received a BA (1994) from Yale University, a PhD (2000) from Harvard University, a JD (2000) from Harvard Law School, and an LLM (2002) from Georgetown University Law Center. She was professor of law with Rutgers University School of Law from 2002 to 2009 and was the Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University from 2009 to 2023. Currently, Perry is a Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor, Harvard Radcliffe Institute, and the Henry A. Morss, Jr., and Elisabeth W. Morss Professor of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality and of African and African American Studies and co-founder of the Black Teacher Archive at Harvard University.
Professor Perry is the author of nine books. Her book Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry, received the Pen Bograd-Weld Award for Biography, The Phi Beta Kappa Christian Gauss Award for outstanding work in literary scholarship, the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction and the Shilts-Grahn Award for nonfiction from the Publishing Triangle. Looking for Lorraine was also named a 2018 notable book by the New York Times, and an honor book by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. It was a finalist for the African American Intellectual History Society Paul Murray Book Prize. Her book May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem, won the 2019 American Studies Association John Hope Franklin Book Award for the best book in American Studies, the Hurston Wright Award for Nonfiction, and was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award in Nonfiction. Her book, Breathe: A Letter to My Sons (Beacon Press, 2019), was a finalist for the 2020 Chautauqua Prize and a finalist for the NAACP Image Award for Excellence in Nonfiction. She received the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2022 for South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation.
IMANI PERRY
