Position

Council Member, Research Division

Institution

Cornell University

Sandra E. Greene is the Stephen ’59 and Madeline ’60 Anbinder Professor of African History and a Stephen Weiss Presidential Fellow at Cornell University, as well as an elected member of the Ambrosiana Academy in Milan, Italy (the second oldest library in Europe), and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her research interests have ranged widely, from the history of gender and ethnic relations during the era of the Atlantic slave trade, to the history of sacred sites and indigenous slavery in West Africa. Her single-authored books include Gender, Ethnicity and Social Change on the Upper Slave Coast (1996), which was selected by the American Council of Learned Societies for e-publication because it is considered an essential inspiration for teaching and research. Her book Sacred Sites and the Colonial Encounter (2002) was a finalist for the Herskovits Prize. More recently, she published West African Narratives of Slavery (2011) and Slave Owners of West Africa: Decision-making in the Age of Abolition (2017). Her co-edited collections include the five-volume New Encyclopedia of Africa (2008), winner of the Conover-Porter Prize; The Bitter Legacy: African Slavery Past and Present (2013); African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade, vols. 1 and 2 (2013 and 2016); and African Slaves, African Masters: Politics, Memories, Social Life (2017). She is also the author of many articles in various journals and edited collections. She has served in a number of academic administrative positions, including chair of the history department at Cornell University (2001–05) and (2016–19), president of the African Studies Association, and has served on numerous journal editorial boards, including the Board of Editors of the American Historical Review, the premier journal for historians in the United States.