A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life with Dr. Allyson Hobbs

‍Between the eighteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, countless African Americans passed as white, leaving behind families and friends, roots and communities. It was a chosen exile, a separation from one racial identity and a leap into another. This history of passing explores the possibilities and challenges that racial indeterminacy presented to men and women living in a country obsessed with racial distinctions. It also tells a tale of loss.

‍Allyson Hobbs is an assistant professor in the history department at Stanford. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard and she received a Ph.D. with distinction from the University of Chicago. She has received fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Clayman Institute for Gender Research, and the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity at Stanford.

Allyson teaches courses on American identity, African American history, African American women’s history, and twentieth century American history. She has won numerous teaching awards including the Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Prize. She has appeared on C-Span and National Public Radio and her work has been featured on cnn.com and slate.com. Allyson’s first book, A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life, published by Harvard University Press, examines the phenomenon of racial passing in the United States from the late eighteenth century to the present.

Free with MoAD Admission