The Clayman Institute for Gender Research

Paula J. Giddings  currently holds the position of Elizabeth A. Woodson 1922 Professor of Afro-American Studies at Smith College.  She is also the editor of Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism. Before attaining her current position at Smith, she had taught at Spelman College, where she was a United Negro Fund Distinguished Scholar; Douglass College/Rutgers University as the Laurie Chair in Women’s Studies; and Princeton and Duke Universities. 

Ms. Giddings has published four books: When and Where I Enter: The Impact on Black Women on Race and Sex in America; In Search of Sisterhood, Delta Sigma Theta and the Challenge of the Black Sorority Movement; Burning All Illusions, (editor) an anthology of articles on race published by the Nation magazine from 1867 to 2000; and Ida, A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching.    

Ida, A Sword Among Lions (2008) received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Biography and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award. Ida was deemed one of the best books of 2008 by the Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune, and also earned the first inaugural John Hope Franklin Research Center Book Award presented by the Duke University Libraries. The book also received  the Letitia Woods Brown Book Award from the Association of Black Women Historians; and the Outstanding Book Award from the Gustavas Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights.

Ms. Giddings is a former book editor and journalist who has written extensively on international and national issues and has been published by the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Jeune Afrique (Paris), and The Nation among other publications.

She has been awarded fellowships by the Guggenheim Foundation; the National Humanities Center in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina; and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University (unfulfilled). She has also been awarded Honorary Doctorates from Wesleyan University and Bennett College , and was named a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar. Ms. Giddings is a member of P.E.N., a writers’ group; Delta Sigma Theta, Inc.  and serves on the boards of the Nation Institute and the Authors’ Guild Foundation.