{{short description|American historian}} {{Infobox person | pre-nominals = | name = <!-- include middle initial, if not specified in birth_name --> | post-nominals = | image = <!-- filename only, no "File:" or "Image:" prefix, and no enclosing brackets --> | alt = | caption = | native_name = | native_name_lang = | pronunciation = | birth_name = <!-- only use if different from name above --> | birth_date = <!-- {{birth date and age|YYYY|MM|DD}} for living people supply only the year with {{Birth year and age|YYYY}} unless the exact date is already widely published, as per WP:DOB. For people who have died, use {{Birth date|YYYY|MM|DD}}. --> | birth_place = Miami, Florida | baptised = <!-- will not display if birth_date is entered --> | nationality = | other_names = | citizenship = | education = | alma_mater = Duke University<br>Yale University | occupation = Historian, professor | years_active = | era = | employer = Princeton University | organization = | known_for = | notable_works = ''To 'Joy My Freedom'' | style = | title = Professor of History and African-American Studies | movement = | boards = | awards = | website = }} '''Tera Hunter''' is an American scholar of African-American history and gender. She holds the Edwards Professor of American History Endowed Chair at Princeton University. She specializes in the study of gender, race, and labor in the history of the Southern United States.
==Early life== Hunter was born in Miami, Florida. She graduated with Distinction in History from Duke University, then earned an M.Phil. and Ph.D. in history from Yale University.<ref name=":0">{{cite web|title=Tera Hunter {{!}} Department of History|url=https://history.princeton.edu/people/tera-hunter|website=history.princeton.edu|publisher=Princeton University|accessdate=February 15, 2018|language=en}}</ref>
==Career== Hunter taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and then Carnegie Mellon University, before joining the faculty of Princeton in 2007.<ref name=":0" />
Hunter published her first book, ''To 'Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women's Lives and Labors After the Civil War'', in 1997.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Bayo |last=Holsey |title=Review of To 'Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women's Lives and Labors After the Civil War |journal=Transforming Anthropology |volume=7 |issue=1 |pages=76–77 |date=January 1998 |doi=10.1525/tran.1998.7.1.76}}</ref> ''To 'Joy My Freedom'' is an account of the lives of southern African American women, specifically domestic workers in Atlanta, from the end of slavery through the beginnings of the Great Migration.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Janet Harrison |last=Shannon |title=Review of To 'Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women's Lives and Labors After the Civil War |journal=Signs |volume=25 |issue=3 |pages=908–912 |date=1 April 2000|doi=10.1086/495488 }}</ref> She details the many struggles of African American washerwomen in Atlanta to control where they worked and for how long, how much they were paid, how their children were raised, and particularly the right to control their own bodies.<ref name=white98/> The book was specifically noted for focusing on working-class women rather than middle- and upper-class women, who are more commonly treated in historical analyses of the period, in part because written records about higher class people are more common.<ref name=white98>{{cite journal |first=Deborah Gray |last=White |title=Review of To 'Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women's Lives and Labors After the Civil War |journal=The Journal of American History |volume=85 |issue=1 |pages=290–291 |date=June 1998|doi=10.2307/2568552 |jstor=2568552 }}</ref> ''To 'Joy My Freedom'' won the H. L. Mitchell Award from the Southern Historical Association,<ref>{{cite web|title=H. L. Mitchell Award|url=http://thesha.org/awards/mitchell|website=thesha.org|publisher=Southern Historical Association|accessdate=February 15, 2018|language=en}}{{Dead link|date=August 2025 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref> the Letitia Brown Memorial Book Prize from the Association of Black Women's Historians, and the Book of the Year Award in 1997 from the International Labor History Association.<ref name=":0" /> The book was the focus of a symposium in the journal ''Labor History''.<ref>{{cite journal |author1=Dana Frank |author2=Evelyn Nakano Glenn |author3=Sharon Harley |author4=Lawrence W. Levine |title=Symposium on Tera Hunter: To 'Joy My Freedom--The labor historian's new clothes |journal=Labor History |volume=39 |issue=2 |pages=169–187 |date=May 1998|doi=10.1080/00236679812331387330 }}</ref>
In 2017, Hunter published ''Bound in Wedlock: Slave and Free Black Marriage in the Nineteenth Century''. The book examines how enslavement affected the marriage practices and family lives of African Americans, and how the legacy of slavery continued to do so in the decades following the end of slavery.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Emma |last=Lapsansky |title=Review of Bound in Wedlock: Slave and Free Black Marriage in the Nineteenth Century |journal=Canadian Journal of History |volume=53 |issue=2 |pages=287–289 |date=1 July 2018 |doi=10.3138/cjh.ach.53.2.rev15|s2cid=165351981 }}</ref> ''Bound in Wedlock'' chronicles a variety of types of intimate relationships, from highly temporary arrangements to ones that were as permanent as possible, both within and outside of formal legal marriage institutions.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Ball |first=Erica L. |title=Review of Bound in Wedlock: Slave and Free Black Marriage in the Nineteenth Century |journal=Journal of the Early Republic |volume=39 |issue=4 |pages=803–806 |year=2019 |doi=10.1353/jer.2019.0108|s2cid=208811541 }}</ref> Hunter analyzes the complicated legality of marital unions between enslaved people, and argues that legal definitions of marriage were often used to break apart the family structures of enslaved people.<ref name=parry19>{{cite journal |first=Tyler D. |last=Parry |title=Review of Bound in Wedlock: Slave and Free Black Marriage in the Nineteenth Century |journal=The Journal of the Civil War Era |volume=9 |issue=2 |pages=306–308 |year=2019 |doi=10.1353/cwe.2019.0032|s2cid=194369813 }}</ref> Hunter also studies the status of marriage law during the Civil War, and in the antebellum era.<ref name=parry19/>
In 2018, Hunter was named the Edwards Professor of American History at Princeton University.<ref>{{cite web |title=Five faculty members named to endowed professorships |url=https://www.princeton.edu/news/2018/10/04/five-faculty-members-named-endowed-professorships |website=princeton.edu |accessdate=September 7, 2019 |date=October 4, 2018}}</ref> She gave the keynote address at the unveiling of the statue of William B. Gould.<ref name=former>{{Cite news | title = William B. Gould, former enslaved person and Civil War Navy Veteran, honored at statue unveiling on Memorial Day Weekend | page = 2 | newspaper = The Dedham Times | volume = 31 | number = 23 | date = June 9, 2023 }}</ref>
==Bibliography== * ''To 'Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women's Lives and Labors After the Civil War'' (Harvard University Press, 1998)<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Shannon|first1=Janet Harrison|title=To 'Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women's Lives and Labors after the Civil War. Tera W. Hunter Gendered Strife and Confusion: The Political Culture of Reconstruction. Laura F. Edwards What a Woman Ought to Be and to Do: Black Professional Women Workers during the Jim Crow Era. Stephanie J. Shaw|journal=Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society|date= April 1, 2000|volume=25|issue=3|pages=908–912|doi=10.1086/495488|issn=0097-9740}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last1=Holsey|first1=Bayo|title=To 'Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women's Lives and Labors After the Civil War|journal=Transforming Anthropology|date= January 1, 1998|volume=7|issue=1|pages=76–77|doi=10.1525/tran.1998.7.1.76|language=en|issn=1548-7466}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|last1=Faust|first1=Drew Gilpin|title=Slave Wages|url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/97/07/13/reviews/970713.13faustt.html|accessdate=February 15, 2018|work=The New York Times|date=July 13, 1997}}</ref> * ed. ''The African American Urban Experience: Perspectives from the Colonial Period to the Present'', with Joe Trotter and Earl Lewis (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) * ed. ''Dialogues of Dispersal: Gender, Sexuality and African Diasporas'', with Sandra Gunning and Michele Mitchell (Wiley-Blackwell, 2004)<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Epprecht|first=Marc|date=2006|title=Review of Dialogues of Dispersal: Gender, Sexuality, and African Diasporas|jstor=40034005|journal=The International Journal of African Historical Studies|volume=39|issue=1|pages=144–147}}</ref> * ''African American Labor History: A Survey of the Scholarship from Jim Crow to the New Millennium'' (2006)<ref name=":0"/> * ''The Making of a People: A History of African-Americans'', with Robin D. G. Kelley and Earl Lewis (W. W. Norton, 2010) * ''Bound in Wedlock: Slave and Free Black Marriage in the Nineteenth Century'' (Harvard University Press, 2017)<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.vibe.com/2017/08/v-books-tera-hunter-bound-in-wedlock/|title=V Books: Prof. Tera Hunter Explores Slave Marriages In 'Bound In Wedlock'|last=Robertson|first=Darryl|date=August 17, 2017|work=Vibe|access-date=February 15, 2018}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/till-death-or-distance-do-us-part-1497043471|title=Till Death or Distance Do Us Part|last=Smith|first=Mark M.|date=June 9, 2017|work=Wall Street Journal|access-date=February 15, 2018|language=en-US|issn=0099-9660}}</ref>
==References== {{reflist|30em}}
{{authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hunter, Tera}} Category:Living people Category:Duke University Trinity College of Arts and Sciences alumni Category:Princeton University faculty Category:University of North Carolina faculty Category:Carnegie Mellon University faculty Category:Yale University alumni Category:21st-century African-American academics Category:21st-century American academics Category:Historians of race relations Category:Historians of the United States Category:20th-century American historians Category:Year of birth missing (living people) Category:21st-century American historians