Jessica Graham

Jessica Graham completed her Ph.D. in history from the University of Chicago (2010) and a master’s degree in Africana Studies at Cornell University (2000).  During a break from graduate school after leaving Cornell, Professor Graham spent two months in Brazil, where her experiences with Afro-Brazilian academics and activists led to an interest in Brazilian history.  Her current book manuscript, Shifting the Meaning of Democracy: Racial Inclusion as a Strategy of the U.S. and Brazilian States, 1930-45, assesses Brazil and the United States during the Great Depression and World War II.  Her book examines the impact of communism, fascism, the Second World War, and Brazil-U.S. relations on evolving racial meanings of political democracy in both nations.  Research for the project has been supported by a grant from the Rockefeller Archive Center, a Fulbright-Hays Dissertation Fellowship, a University of Notre Dame Erskine A. Peters Dissertation Fellowship, and a University of Notre Dame Moreau Postdoctoral Fellowship, among others.  Professor Graham’s next article, which analyzes communist racial doctrine in Brazil, will appear in the edited volume, Políticas da raça: Experiências e legados da abolição e da pós-emancipação no brasil in 2015.

Professor Graham’s 2013 Founders’ Day Talk on UCSD TV

Twentieth century U.S. and Brazil, (U.S.) African American and Afro-Brazilian history, race, political ideology, cultural policy/diplomacy, and transnational history.

• History of Brazil to 1889
• History of Brazil, 1889 to the Present
• African American Internationalism
• Race and Ethnicity in the United States (HILD 7A)