Erik S. McDuffie

Erik S. McDuffie is a professor of African American Studies and History, and the Director of the Center for African Studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His research and teaching interests include Black movements, Black feminisms, Black (inter)nationalism, the Midwest, gender, sexualities, urban history, and Global Africa. He is the recipient of many awards and fellowships, including from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council for Learned Societies. He is the author of the prize-winning monographs The Second Battle for Africa: Garveyism, the US Heartland, and Global Black Freedom (Duke University Press, 2024) and Sojourning for Freedom: Black Women, American Communism, and the Making of Black Left Feminism (Duke University Press, 2011). His work has appeared in African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal; African Identities; American Communist History; Biography; Journal of African American History; Journal of West African History; Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International Women of Color; Radical History Review; Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society; and Women, Families, and Children of Color, among other journals and edited volumes. 

Currently, McDuffie is working on a book, tentatively titled Freedom-Seeking: The Global Life and Journeys of Black Ohio Abolitionist John Hatfield. The book uncovers the dynamic and complex transnational linkages among mid-nineteenth-century African American midwesterners, Canada, Australia, and the Atlantic and Pacific worlds, through the life and times of John Hatfield of Cincinnati, Ohio, an internationally prominent abolitionist and globetrotter, and McDuffie's great-great-great grandfather.

Professionally, McDuffie is actively involved in advancing African American studies, African Diaspora studies, African studies, and Black women's studies. He is a lifetime and former executive board member of the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD), who served as the organization's secretary and vice president.

McDuffie earned his Ph.D. in History from New York University. Originally from Detroit, Michigan, McDuffie is a sixth generation midwesterner, whose family hails from the United States, Canada, St. Kitts, and Australia.