- Associate Professor, Liberal Studies
Research Interests
- History of New York City, 19th Century New York, New YorkÕs free Black Communities, Material Culture, Public History, Archives, Digital Humanities
Education
- Ph.D., University of Sussex
- B.A. (Hons), Somerville College, Oxford University.
Concentrations taught in MALS:
New York Studies
Courses Taught in MALS:
- Narratives of New York: Literature and the Visual Arts (Fall 2020)
- Metropolis: A Political, Historical, and Sociological Profile of NYC (Spring 2022)
publications:
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“‘In Honor of Himself’: Entrepreneurship and Economic Self-Determination in Antebellum Brooklyn, New York.” African American Literature in Transition, 1750-2015, Volume 2: 1800-1830, edited by Jasmine Nichole Cobb, Cambridge University Press, 2021.
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The City Amplified: Oral Histories and Radical Archives, a collection of essays from The City Amplified Working Group at the Graduate Center CUNY, co-edited by Prithi Kanakamedala and Allison Guess, New York: Printed at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, 2019.
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Review of Black Citizenship in the Age of Jim Crow. New York History 100, no. 1 (2019): 169-173. doi:10.1353/nyh.2019.0017.
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“St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery.” Dancing Platform Praying Grounds: Blackness, Churches, and Downtown Dance. Catalog. New York, NY: Danspace Project, 2018.
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“Considered a Citizen of the United States”: George DeGrasse, a South Asian in Early (African) America.” Indo-American Encounters in the Early Republic, edited by Anupama Arora and Rajender Kaur, Palgrave, 2017
About Professor Prithi Kanakamedala
Prithi Kanakamedala an Associate Professor in the History Department at Bronx Community College of the City University of New York where she teaches U.S. History, African-American History, and the History of New York City. Her research looks at community-building, race, and citizenship in Brooklyn and New York’s 19th-century free Black communities.
As a public historian she has worked with a range of cultural organizations including Danspace Project Inc, Place Matters/ City Lore, Brooklyn Historical Society (now Center for Brooklyn History at Brooklyn Public Library), and Weeksville Heritage Center. You can follow her on Twitter @pkanaka