Historian Allyson Hobbs selected for Distinguished Lectureship Program

ALLYSON HOBBS, assistant professor of history, is one of 78 historians selected for the Organization of American Historians’ (OAH) Distinguished Lectureship Program. Founded in 1907, the OAH is the largest professional society dedicated to the teaching and study of American history.

OAH Distinguished Lecturers are appointed annually and give public lectures on behalf of the association at colleges, universities, state and local historical societies, museums, libraries, high schools, workshops and conferences.

Hobbs, who teaches courses on American identity, African American history, African American women’s history and 20th-century American history and culture, gives lectures on such topics as “A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life,” “One-Way Ticket: A History of the Great Migration” and “Far from Sanctuary: African American Travel in the 20th Century.”

Hobbs’ first book, A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life, won the OAH Frederick Jackson Turner Prize and the OAH Lawrence W. Levine Award. Her next book, Far From Sanctuary: African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights, explores the violence, humiliation and indignities that mid-20th-century African American motorists experienced on the road.