Fellowship / Fellows

Rebecca Hall

  • 2022–2023
  • Humanities
  • Mary Beth and Chris Gordon Fellow
  • Independent Scholar
Portrait of Rebecca Hall
Photo by Cat Palmer

This information is accurate as of the fellowship year indicated for each fellow.

Rebecca Hall is an independent scholar, activist, and educator. She writes and publishes on the history of race, gender, law, and resistance as well as publishes articles on climate justice and intersectional feminist theory. Her most recent book, Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts (Simon & Schuster, 2021), has won numerous awards and was listed as a best book of 2021 by Forbes, Ms., NPR, and the Washington Post.

Hall will be writing the script and working with her illustrator to complete the storyboards for her next graphic narrative, “Taking Freedom.” It focuses on the ways in which enslaved women manifested their own emancipation and made freedom claims during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Recovering Black women’s political agency, it intervenes in the mainstream historical narrative that emancipation was granted to enslaved people solely through the actions of the federal government.  

Hall has a JD from UC Berkeley School of Law and a PhD in history from UC Santa Cruz. Her recent book was a finalist for the Pen Open Book Award and an NAACP Image Award. Hall’s work has been supported by numerous grants and fellowships, including from the American Association of University Women, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Schomburg Center Scholars-in-Residence Program.

Our 2023–2024 Fellows

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