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Kanakamedala, Prathibha

718-289-5299
prathibha.kanakamedala@bcc.cuny.edu
COLSTON HALL 341
Prithi Kanakamedala is Professor of History at Bronx Community College, with a primary focus on New York City History, Public History, and African American History. 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. She serves as co-Deputy Chair in the History Department at BCC and is also an active faculty member at the CUNY Graduate Center.

At BCC, she is a founding member of AMENAAA and loves hearing from our college alumni so that she can feature them on the department website and social media. As a public historian, she has worked with a range of cultural organizations in New York City. Prithi 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 Member, M.A. in Liberal Studies Program, CUNY Graduate Center, 2021 - Present
  • Professional Staff Congress-City University of New York Research Award, 2024, 2021
  • Mellon/ ACLS Community College Faculty Fellowship, 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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