{{Short description|American historian (1930–2023)}} {{Use American English|date=April 2026}} {{Use mdy dates|date=February 2023}} {{infobox person |name=Jean Fagan Yellin |birth_date={{birth date|1930|9|19}} |death_date={{death date and age|2023|7|19|1930|9|19}} |education=Roosevelt University (BA)<br>University of Illinois (MA, PhD) |occupation=Historian |spouse=Ed Yellin |awards=Frederick Douglass Book Prize (2004) }} '''Jean Fagan Yellin''' (September 19, 1930 – July 19, 2023) was an American historian specializing in women's history and African-American history, and Distinguished Professor Emerita of English at Pace University.<ref name="auto">{{cite web|url=http://web.pace.edu/page.cfm?doc_id=25997 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20120730105812/http://web.pace.edu/page.cfm?doc_id=25997 |url-status=dead |archive-date=July 30, 2012 |title=Pace University - Commencement 2007 - Jean Fagan Yellin |publisher=Web.pace.edu |accessdate=September 21, 2010 }}</ref> She is best known for her scholarship on escaped slave, abolitionist, and author Harriet Jacobs.
==Life and career== Yellin was born to Sarah and Peter Fagan. She was married to Ed Yellin and together, they published a memoir entitled ''In Contempt, Defending Free Speech, Defeating HUAC'',<ref>Matrullo, Tom, ''[https://medium.com/@crowdedfalafel/remembering-ed-yellin-5037a2983284 Remembering Ed Yellin]'', Medium, February 23, 2020</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.altegettingoldtogether.com/our-pushcart-1/in-contempt|title=In Contempt|access-date=February 28, 2020|archive-date=February 28, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200228035235/https://www.altegettingoldtogether.com/our-pushcart-1/in-contempt|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>Lange, Erin, ''[https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/77604/langerin.pdf;sequence=1 “Who Can Define the Meaning of Un-American?” The Story of Ed Yellin and the Era of Anti-Communism]'', Department of History, University of Michigan, March 29, 2010</ref> which documented the effect upon their lives of his legal battle for First Amendment rights, even after he had been exonerated by the Supreme Court of the United States. Her children and grandchildren include Peter, Lisa, Michael, David, Amelia, Mosé, Genevra, Benjamin, Sarah, and Blaze.<ref>Jean Fagan Yellin, Women & Sisters: The Antislavery Feminists in American Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), Dedication; Jean Fagan Yellin, Harriet Jacobs: A Life (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2004), xiii; Yellin, Jean Fagan and others, eds., The Harriet Jacobs Family Papers, 2 vols. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), dedication.</ref>
Yellin received her B.A. from Roosevelt University and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Illinois. She began teaching at Pace University in 1968.<ref name="auto"/> Her dissertation was published in 1972 as ''The Intricate Knot: Black Figures in American Literature''.<ref>Jean Fagan Yellin, Harriet Jacobs: A Life (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2004), 267.</ref> She was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1990 for ''Women and Sisters: The Anti-Slavery Feminists in American Culture'' and won the 2004 Frederick Douglass Prize<ref name="auto"/> and the Modern Language Association's William Sanders Scarborough Prize<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.pacepress.org/2.3830/professor-yellin-honored-by-modern-language-association-1.451477 |title=Professor Yellin Honored by Modern Language Association |publisher=pacepress.org |accessdate=November 10, 2010 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20110722082507/http://www.pacepress.org/2.3830/professor-yellin-honored-by-modern-language-association-1.451477 |archivedate=July 22, 2011 }}</ref> for ''Harriet Jacobs: A Life''.
==Scholarship on Harriet Jacobs== [[File:Gilbert Studios photograph of Harriet Jacobs.jpg|thumb|Harriet Jacobs in 1894]] Yellin is best known for her research on the former slave Harriet Jacobs and her autobiography, ''Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl''. Although ''Incidents'' had been quite popular at the time of the American Civil War, "by the twentieth century both Jacobs and her book were forgotten".<ref>H.Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Ed. J.F.Yellin, Cambridge 2000, p. xxvii.</ref>
Prior to Yellin's work in the 1970s-1980s, the accepted academic opinion, voiced by such historians as John Blassingame, was that ''Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl'' was a fictional novel written by Lydia Maria Child. While re-reading ''Incidents'' in the 1970s as part of a project to educate herself in the use of gender as a category of analysis, Yellin became interested in the question of the text's true authorship. Over the course of a six-year effort, Yellin found and used a variety of historical documents, including from the Amy Post papers at the University of Rochester, state and local historical societies, and the Horniblow and Norcom papers at the North Carolina state archives, to establish both that Harriet Jacobs was the true author of ''Incidents,'' and that the narrative was her autobiography, not a work of fiction. At the suggestion of historian Herbert Gutman, she contacted Harvard University Press regarding publication, and her edition of ''Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl'' was published in 1987 with the endorsement of Professor John Blassingame.<ref>Jean Fagan Yellin, Harriet Jacobs: A Life (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2004), xv-xx; Yellin, Jean Fagan and others, eds., The Harriet Jacobs Family Papers, 2 vols. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), xxiii.</ref>
After the publication of ''Incidents,'' Yellin engaged in further research which revealed that Jacobs had been well-known in her own time and was very involved in the abolitionist and feminist movements and in relief and education efforts in the South during and after the Civil War. Yellin decided that a biography of Jacobs was needed to "embed her appropriately in American cultural history",<ref>Jean Fagan Yellin, Harriet Jacobs: A Life (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2004), xx; Yellin, Jean Fagan and others, eds., The Harriet Jacobs Family Papers, 2 vols. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), xxiii.</ref> and ''Harriet Jacobs: A Life'' was published in 2004.
While working on the biography, Yellin also conceived of the idea of the ''Harriet Jacobs Papers Project'', a collection of documents by and about Jacobs. In 2000, an advisory board for the project was established, and after funding was awarded, the project began on a full-time basis in September 2002. Sources of funding included the Carolina State Archives, the University of North Carolina Press, Pace University, the Gladys Delmas Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and the Center for the Study of the American South. The project won endorsement, and later a grant, from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, and was named by the NEH as one of its "We the People" projects. The ''Harriet Jacobs Papers Project'' amassed approximately 900 documents by, to, and about Harriet Jacobs, her brother John S. Jacobs, and her daughter Louisa Matilda Jacobs, more than 300 of which were published in 2008 in a two-volume edition entitled ''The Harriet Jacobs Family Papers''. The published edition of the papers is intended for an audience of students, teachers, and scholars from elementary through graduate school, as well as for the general public.<ref>Jean Fagan Yellin, Harriet Jacobs: A Life (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2004), xx, 268; Yellin, Jean Fagan and others, eds., The Harriet Jacobs Family Papers, 2 vols. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), xxiv-xxvi, xxix.</ref>
==Death== Jean Fagan Yellin died on July 19, 2023, at the age of 92.<ref>[https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/28/books/jean-fagan-yellin-dead.html Jean Fagan Yellin, Who Uncovered a Slavery Tale’s True Author, Dies at 92] {{subscription required}}</ref>
==Fellowships and grants== *National Museum of American Art of the Smithsonian Institution fellowship <ref name="auto1">Jean Fagan Yellin, Women & Sisters: The Antislavery Feminists in American Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), xix.</ref> *American Association of University Women Founders Fellowship<ref name="auto1"/> *National Humanities Institute of Yale fellowship <ref name="auto1"/> *National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for College Teachers (1986-1987 & 1995) <ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.neh.gov/news/humanities/2004-01/incidents.html |title=Incidents in the Life of an Abolitionist: The Harriet Jacobs Papers Project |publisher=Neh.gov |date= |accessdate=September 21, 2010 |archive-date=May 29, 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100529030411/http://www.neh.gov///news/humanities/2004-01/incidents.html |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>Jean Fagan Yellin, Harriet Jacobs: A Life (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2004), xii; Yellin, Jean Fagan and others, eds., The Harriet Jacobs Family Papers, 2 vols. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), xxiii.</ref> *Research fellowship form the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and the Library Company of Philadelphia (1988) <ref name="auto2">Jean Fagan Yellin, Harriet Jacobs: A Life (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2004), xii</ref> *Scholar-in-Residency at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of the New York Public Library, funded by the Ford Foundation (1989–90)<ref name="auto2"/> *Archie K. Davis Fellowship granted by the Carolina Society at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1991)<ref name="auto2"/> *Fellowship at the W.E.B. DuBois Institute for Afro-American Research at Harvard University (1993–94) <ref name="auto2"/> *National Historical Publications and Records Commission endorsement (2003) and grant (2004) <ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.archives.gov/nhprc/projects/states-territories/ny.html|title=New York|date=August 15, 2016}}</ref> *Ford Foundation grant (2004) <ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.pacepress.org/2.3830/grant-furthers-jacobs-project-at-pace-1.452859 |title=Grant furthers Jacobs Project at Pace |publisher=pacepress.org |accessdate=November 10, 2010 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20110722082602/http://www.pacepress.org/2.3830/grant-furthers-jacobs-project-at-pace-1.452859 |archivedate=July 22, 2011 }}</ref>
==Publications== *Yellin, Jean Fagan. ''The Intricate Knot: Black Figures in American Literature, 1776-1863.'' New York: New York University Press, 1972. {{ISBN|978-0-8147-9650-4}} *Yellin, Jean Fagan. “''Written by Herself:'' Harriet Jacobs’s Slave Narrative.” ''American Literature'' 53 (Nov 1981): 479-486. *Yellin, Jean Fagan. ''Women & Sisters: The Antislavery Feminists in American Culture.'' New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989. {{ISBN|978-0-300-04515-4}} *Yellin, Jean Fagan. “Through Her Brother’s Eyes: ''Incidents'' and “A True Tale.” In ''Harriet Jacobs and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: New Critical Essays,'' ed. Deborah M. Garfield and Rafia Zafar, 44-56. Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. {{ISBN|978-0-521-49779-4}} *{{cite book| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5TiUG7lUrBAC&q=jean+fagan+yellin| title=Harriet Jacobs: A Life| publisher=Westview Press| year= 2005| isbn=978-0-465-09289-5 }} *{{cite book| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JZIbpB7SnFoC&q=jean+fagan+yellin| title=Incidents in the life of a slave girl : written by herself| editor=Jean Fagan Yellin| publisher=Harvard University Press| year= 2009| isbn= 978-0-674-03583-6 }} *{{cite book| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gtpR68q1RmsC&q=jean+fagan+yellin| title=The pen is ours: a listing of writings by and about African-American women before 1910 with secondary bibliography to the present|editor1=Jean Fagan Yellin |editor2=Cynthia D. Bond| publisher=Oxford University Press | year= 1991| isbn=978-0-19-506203-8}} *{{cite book| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YDnCTyp5ZkgC&q=jean+fagan+yellin| title=The Abolitionist sisterhood: women's political culture in Antebellum America|editor1=Jean Fagan Yellin |editor2=John C. Van Horne| publisher=Cornell University Press| year= 1994| isbn=978-0-8014-8011-9 }} *Yellin, Jean Fagan, Joseph M. Thomas, Kate Culkin, and Scott Korb, eds. ''The Harriet Jacobs Family Papers.'' 2 vols. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2008. {{ISBN|978-0-8078-3131-1}}
==Reviews== *{{cite magazine| url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101040209-586212,00.html| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050324215656/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101040209-586212,00.html| url-status=dead| archive-date=March 24, 2005| title=Reader, My Story Ends with Freedom| magazine=Time| author= Lev Grossman| author-link= Lev Grossman| date= February 2, 2004 }} *{{cite news| url=https://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/11/books/to-be-a-slave.html| title=To Be a Slave| work=the New York Times| author= David S. Reynolds| date= July 11, 2004 }}
==References== {{Reflist}}
==External links== *[https://web.archive.org/web/20090122050428/http://www.yale.edu/glc/harriet/ "Harriet Jacobs website"], ''Yale University'' *[http://webpage.pace.edu/kculkin/index.html "The Harriet Jacobs Papers" website] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110503183233/http://webpage.pace.edu/kculkin/index.html |date=May 3, 2011 }}, ''Pace University'' *[https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17897134 "Professor Sheds Light on Harriet Jacobs' Path to Freedom"], ''NPR'' *[https://web.archive.org/web/20121104194711/http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-94188545.html "Transcript: Interview: Professor Jean Fagan Yellin shares the remarkable story of Harriet Jacobs"], ''NPR'', Tavis Smiley, May 4, 2004 *[http://www.pacepress.org/2.3830/a-celebration-of-the-harriet-jacobs-papers-1.452463 "A Celebration of the Harriet Jacobs Papers"], ''Pace Press,'' October 7, 2004 *[https://web.archive.org/web/20110629115213/http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2004/02.19/03-hjacobs.html "Up from slavery: Jean Fagan Yellin tells heroic story of former slave Harriet Jacobs"], ''Harvard Gazette'' *[http://www.pacepress.org/2.3830/professor-s-discovery-honored-by-university-1.449430 "Professor's discovery honored by University"], ''Pace Press,'' November 4, 2008
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Yellin, Jean Fagan}} Category:1930 births Category:2023 deaths Category:21st-century American historians Category:Pace University faculty Category:Roosevelt University alumni Category:University of Illinois System alumni Category:American women historians Category:21st-century American women writers Category:20th-century American historians Category:20th-century American women writers