https://www.professorsophiewhite.com/events daily 0.75 2021-02-15 https://www.professorsophiewhite.com/events/frederick-douglass-book-prize-awards-ceremony monthly 0.5 2021-02-15 https://www.professorsophiewhite.com/events/author-talk-omohundro-institute monthly 0.5 2021-01-18 https://www.professorsophiewhite.com/events/wilberforce-webinar monthly 0.5 2021-01-18 https://www.professorsophiewhite.com/events/calliope-conference monthly 0.5 2021-02-15 https://www.professorsophiewhite.com/events/gilder-lehrman-speaker monthly 0.5 2021-02-15 https://www.professorsophiewhite.com/contact daily 0.75 2021-03-01 https://www.professorsophiewhite.com/voices-of-the-enslaved daily 0.75 2023-06-15 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe35f02fe40230b11b07eb8/1610484334604-KBJOR06DBOVVKHYI6W98/WHITE-Voices-cover-final.jpg Voices of the Enslaved https://www.professorsophiewhite.com/material-and-visual-culture daily 0.75 2021-01-18 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe35f02fe40230b11b07eb8/1610482801753-5GEEBD5W7P3L0392RQ78/Screen+Shot+2020-12-23+at+11.14.12+AM.png Material & Visual Culture https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe35f02fe40230b11b07eb8/1610382022036-QZI9DZQOCNL36YD75FDM/GAU9RSzQ.jpeg Material & Visual Culture https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe35f02fe40230b11b07eb8/1610484000995-QPKG2GJ53825X180F1PJ/M67_8_74a-b-DL002.jpg Material & Visual Culture https://www.professorsophiewhite.com/media daily 0.75 2021-03-01 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe35f02fe40230b11b07eb8/1610989765937-MTDBDLXJ8EW58YCXF35F/IMG_0797.jpg Media - Follow me on Twitter: @profsophiewhite Recent Coverage “American studies professor wins Frederick Douglass Book Prize — the seventh book award for her research on slaves’ courtroom testimony” “Sophie White Wins the 2020 Frederick Douglass Book Prize” https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe35f02fe40230b11b07eb8/1609011769358-0O2MW349SWVKKEQX472Y/TriPodNOLA.png Media https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe35f02fe40230b11b07eb8/1609012092034-OL6KGEGDP7NOF7V2D6SR/ASLH.jpg Media https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe35f02fe40230b11b07eb8/1609011935757-CBZPI72DK4RHW6JZ6BJ0/newbooksnetwork.jpg Media https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe35f02fe40230b11b07eb8/1614619902311-49HB01PV3W4EAT42E55N/unnamed%2B%25281%2529.jpg Media https://www.professorsophiewhite.com/about daily 1.0 2025-04-02 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe35f02fe40230b11b07eb8/1609021544821-7O0IRBQLD1P6BISYR2U4/SophieWhite-authorphoto-R.jpg+copy.jpg About Welcome to the website of Professor and Historian, Sophie White! Professor of American Studies, Concurrent Professor in the Departments of Africana Studies, History, and Gender Studies, and Fellow of the Nanovic Institute for European Studies at the University of Notre Dame. She is an historian of early America with an interdisciplinary focus on cultural encounters between Europeans, Africans and Native Americans, and a commitment to Atlantic and global research perspectives. Her newest book, Voices of the Enslaved: Love, Labor, and Longing in French Louisiana (Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture/University of North Carolina Press, 2019) foregrounds an exceptional set of source material about slavery in French America: court cases in which enslaved individuals testified and in the process produced riveting autobiographical narratives. Voices of the Enslaved has won the 2020 James A. Rawley Book Prize from the American Historical Association, the Rosalyn Terborg-Penn Prize in Gender & Sexuality from the Association for the Worldwide Study of the African Diaspora (ASWAD), the 2020 Mary Alice and Philip Boucher Book Prize, the 2019 Kemper and Leila Williams Book Prize, and the 2020 Summerlee Book Prize, and Honorable Mention, 2020 Merle Curti Award for Best Book in American Social History from the Organization of American Historians. It is shortlististed for the Kenshur Prize for Best Book in Eighteenth-Century Studies and is a finalist for the ASWAD Sterling Stuckey Book Prize and the Frederick Douglass Book Prize. With Trevor Burnard, she has co-edited a volume on slave testimony in French and British America 1750-1848 (Routledge, 2020) and she is preparing a digital humanities project, Hearing Slaves Speak in Colonial America: A Database of Voices of the Voiceless, which is under contract with the Omohundro Institute for inclusion in their Ol Reader for "digital projects that expand our understanding of early American history intellectually, conceptually and rhetorically." Her first book, Wild Frenchmen and Frenchified Indians: Material Culture and Race in Colonial Louisiana was published with the University of Pennsylvania Press/McNeil Series in Early American Studies in 2012. Her next book project examines redhead myths, juxtaposing cultural history with the new genomic discoveries and biological implications of red hair, a project that falls within her purview as a scholar of appearance and cultural constructions of otherness. She is signed to the Dunow, Carlson & Lerner Literary Agency for this book. In addition White is the author of numerous articles and essays, in journals such as The William and Mary Quarterly, Gender and History and The Winterthur Portfolio. Among other grants and awards, White was a recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities for Wild Frenchmen and Voices of the Enslaved. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe35f02fe40230b11b07eb8/1610824054268-AUDLUX40ASDZJHT8Z5Q4/WHITE-Voices-cover-final.jpg About My most recent book, Voices of the Enslaved: Love, Labor, and Longing in French Louisiana (Omohundro Institute, 2019) Soon to appear in French translation with Karthala Winner of 7 book prizes including the Frederick Douglass Book Prize https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe35f02fe40230b11b07eb8/1610824105489-MI640FUKDC6FY8TFOJYJ/Shah_Ismail_I.jpg About - My next book on the global history of red hair My fabulous and intriguing new research on the global and genomic history of redheads! https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe35f02fe40230b11b07eb8/1610823786722-VWOGDY0VFRYJJ2SJRXWV/Image_1+2021-01-11_18-11-58.jpeg About - My work on Race & Slavery My work on Race & Slavery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe35f02fe40230b11b07eb8/1610824074709-RNHZCA277WSKBS4ZZLS7/doc-img-167534.jpg About - My Digital Humanities project for the Omohundro Institute My Digital Humanities project on slave testimony for the Omohundro OI Reader https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe35f02fe40230b11b07eb8/1610824090253-2A9QWW1HT5DTJ3T5LL8G/GAU9RSzQ.jpeg About My extensive work on Material & Visual Culture including my first book, Wild Frenchmen and Frenchified Indians: Material Culture and Race in Colonial Louisiana (Penn Press, 2012) https://www.professorsophiewhite.com/red-hair daily 0.75 2023-06-15 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe35f02fe40230b11b07eb8/1610382285352-6FSRO21NN81S6F1QYZFR/Shah_Ismail_I.jpg Red Hair One story stands out, told me by a middle-aged Dutch woman. Before her birth, her father had let it be known that he didn’t care if his baby were born male or female, he only feared it might be redhaired. She was born with flaming bright red hair. Her father shaved her head. He did so for the next six years, so that every photograph of her from early childhood shows a little girl with bald head covered by a large hat. Uncovering the reason for that story of alienation unfolding among blood relatives led me to unpack eerily similar incidences of parents hiding (protecting?) their children’s red hair, all the way to the Egyptian schoolboy I came across in Cairo, where he alone of all his classmates kept a cap firmly planted over his deep copper red hair. Red hair attracts and it repels, usually intensely, and that is the story I plan to tell. https://www.professorsophiewhite.com/race-slavery daily 0.75 2025-04-02 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe35f02fe40230b11b07eb8/1610384685011-2R2V7QR3JN1UL02OJRJ6/Screen+Shot+2021-01-11+at+12.04.35+PM.png Race & Slavery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe35f02fe40230b11b07eb8/1610384210700-25G25I9AOQ25KTUIXVQZ/GAU9RSzQ.jpeg Race & Slavery https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe35f02fe40230b11b07eb8/1610384170778-Q87TY6XPCV5TMM64FEPJ/WHITE-Voices-cover-final.jpg Race & Slavery https://www.professorsophiewhite.com/digital-humanities-project daily 0.75 2025-04-02 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe35f02fe40230b11b07eb8/1610483020408-WV8VQ90YDRL1LGAB6724/doc-img-167534.jpg Digital Humanities A major off-shoot from my work on Voices of the Enslaved is a digital humanities project that extends my interest in expanding and rethinking the established canon of slave narratives in the Americas, the Caribbean, and the Indian Ocean. Voices of the Enslaved: A Digital Humanities Approach to Encountering the Archive was produced in partnership with the Omohundro Institute's OI Reader platform and features edited transcriptions and translations of slaves’ courtroom testimony, aimed at both a scholarly and public audience. A fully bilingual French-English version of the website is forthcoming Summer 2015. As an extension of this work, I am dedicated to preserving and disseminating knowledge about slavery and its legacies, through helping safeguard archives through support of digitization projects such as the Louisiana Colonial Documents Digitization Project or advocacy work for organizations such as the Committee for the Slavery Museum Project in Mauritius (my birthplace). https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe35f02fe40230b11b07eb8/1610821869454-94G8U9XIYQAH4AAIS36V/oir-logo-white-h-500.png Digital Humanities https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe35f02fe40230b11b07eb8/1610821849107-K26N3QQAH0RQGCAX1GV5/Nav_Logo.png Digital Humanities https://www.professorsophiewhite.com/events-1 daily 0.75 2021-02-15 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe35f02fe40230b11b07eb8/1613422346368-V22JBZAURNZSK00MH4YH/logo.jpg Events https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe35f02fe40230b11b07eb8/1613422396426-RB1XP0FQVKEFNH477AX2/logo.jpg Events https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe35f02fe40230b11b07eb8/1613422547605-AUHERIFOOC16DA6XICOA/17._kitlv_26588_-_isidore_van_kinsbergen_-_touring_music_and_dance_company_in_batavia_-_around_1870_2.png Events