IRAAS BOOK PANEL DISCUSSION
March 27 at 6:00pm
MERZE TATE: THE GLOBAL ODYSSEY OF A BLACK WOMAN SCHOLAR
with author
BARBARA D. SAVAGE, Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought-University of Pennsylvania.
Discussants
Farah J. Griffin, English & Comparative Literature and African-American & African Diaspora Studies- Columbia University
Tiffany Gill, Department of History - Rutgers University- New Brunswick
Premilla Nadasen, Department of History- Barnard College
Susan G. Pedersen, Department of History -Columbia University
Imaobong Umoren, Department of International History-London School of Economics
Location: Columbia University School of Journalism
Pulitzer World Room - 3rd floor
2950 Broadway · New York, NY 10027
No RSVP Necessary - Free & Open To The Public
Barbara D. Savage is an historian from the University of Pennsylvania and the Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought in the Department of Africana Studies where she also served from 2013-2017 as inaugural chair. In 2018-19, she was the Vyvyan Harmsworth Visiting Professor of American History at the University of Oxford and remains a Distinguished Fellow at its Rothermere American Institute. Savage is the author of Merze Tate: The Global Odyssey of a Black Woman Scholar (Yale, 2023) which won the 2024 ASALH Best Book Prize. She is the author of two other prize-winning books, most recently Your Spirits Walk Beside Us: The Politics of Black Religion which received the 2012 Grawemeyer Prize in Religion. She also co-edited two books: Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women and Women and Religion in the African Diaspora.
Book Synopsis
"A powerful and inspiring biography of Merze Tate, a trailblazing Black woman scholar and intrepid world traveler. Born in rural Michigan during the Jim Crow era, the bold and irrepressible Merze Tate (1905–1996) refused to limit her intellectual ambitions, despite living in what she called a “sex and race discriminating world.” Against all odds, the brilliant and hardworking Tate earned degrees in international relations from Oxford University in 1935 and a doctorate in government from Harvard in 1941. She then joined the faculty of Howard University, where she taught for three decades of her long life spanning the tumultuous twentieth century.
This book revives and critiques Tate’s prolific and prescient body of scholarship, with topics ranging from nuclear arms limitations to race and imperialism in India, Asia, the Pacific, and Africa. Tate credited her success to other women, Black and white, who helped her realize her dream of becoming a scholar. Her quest for research and adventure took her around the world twice, traveling solo with her cameras.
Barbara Savage’s skilled rendering of Tate’s story is built on more than a decade of research. Tate’s life and work challenge provincial approaches to African American and American history, women’s history, the history of education, diplomatic history, and international thought."
Event Collaborators: African American & African Diaspora Studies Department-Columbia University (AAADS) The Institute for Research in African-American Studies-Columbia University (IRAAS); The Institute For Social And Economic Research And Policy- Columbia University (ISERP)
