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Kanakamedala, Prathibha

718-289-5299
prathibha.kanakamedala@bcc.cuny.edu
COLSTON HALL 341

Prithi Kanakamedala is Professor and Deputy Chair of History at Bronx Community College. She is the author of Brooklynites: the Remarkable Story of the Free Black Communities that Built a Borough (NYU Press) that won the 2024 Victorian Society of New York Book Award. Her research and teaching focus on African American History, New York City History, and U.S. History. 

 
Dr. Kanakamedala is also an active faculty member at the CUNY Graduate Center where she is Professor of Liberal Studies, and Black, Race and Ethnic Studies. As a public historian, she has worked with a range of cultural organizations in New York City. She is originally from Liverpool, England.

Education:

Ph.D., University of Sussex, United Kingdom
M.A., University of Sussex, United Kingdom
B.A. (Hons), Somerville College, University of Oxford, United Kingdom

Recent Courses Taught:
HIS 20 American Nation: The Political & Social Development of a People
HIS 37 African American History
HIS 51 History of New York City

Research Interests:
History of New York City, 19th Century New York, African American History, Material Culture, Digital Humanities, Public History

Honors, Awards, and Affiliations:

  • Coordinator, Advanced Certificate in Public Scholarship, CUNY Graduate Center, 2025 - Present
  • Faculty Coordinator, PS2 at Center for the Humanities, CUNY Graduate Center, 2023 - Present
  • Faculty, Liberal Studies Program and Black, Race, & Ethnic Studies Program, CUNY Graduate Center, 2021 - Present
  • Mellon/ ACLS Community College Faculty Fellowship, 2021
  • Professional Staff Congress-City University of New York Research Award, 2021
  • CUNY Arts Faculty Fellowship, 2020
  • William Stewart Travel Award, 2019
  • Bronx Community College President Grant, 2018
  • Gittell Junior Faculty Award, 2015
Select Publications:
  • Brooklynites: Free Black Communities in the Ninteenth-Century (NYU Press, 2024).
  • “‘We Must Stand United’: Re-Telling a Radical History of Bronx Community College at the City University of New York.” Rhetoric, Public Memory, and Campus History, edited by Rhondda Robinson Thomas. Liverpool University Press, 2022
  • Co-author with Obden Mondésir, “A Time for Seditious Speech. Reflections on Weeksville.” Studies into Darkness: The Perils and Promise of Freedom of Speech, edited by Carin Kuoni and Laura Raicovich. Amherst College Press, 2022
  • “Plymouth Church.” A People’s Guide to New York City, edited by Penny Lewis, Emily Tumpson Molina, Carolina Munoz. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2022
  • “‘In Honor of Himself’: Entrepreneurship and Economic Self-Determination in Antebellum Brooklyn, New York.” African American Literature in Transition, 1750-2015, Volume 2: 1800-1830, edited by Jasmine Nichole Cobb, Cambridge University Press, 2021
  • The City Amplified: Oral Histories and Radical Archives, a collection of essays from The City Amplified Working Group at the Graduate Center CUNY, co-edited by Prithi Kanakamedala and Allison Guess, New York: Printed at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, 2019
  • Review of Black Citizenship in the Age of Jim Crow. New York History 100, no. 1 (2019): 169-173
  • “St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery.” Dancing Platform Praying Grounds: Blackness, Churches, and Downtown Dance. Catalog. New York, NY: Danspace Project, 2018
  • “Considered a Citizen of the United States”: George DeGrasse, a South Asian in Early (African) America.” Indo-American Encounters in the Early Republic, edited by Anupama Arora and Rajender Kaur, Palgrave, 2017
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