Tera Hunter is a specialist in the 19th and 20th centuries. Her research focuses on gender, race, labor, and Southern histories.
A native of Miami, Hunter attended Duke University where she graduated with Distinction in History. She received a M.Phil. in history from Yale University and a Ph.D. from Yale. Hunter previously taught at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She joined the Princeton faculty in the fall 2007. She has received numerous fellowships and grants including the National Humanities Center Fellowship (2017-2018).
Bound in Wedlock: Slave and Free Black Marriage in the Nineteenth Century (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2017) is her latest book. It is the winner of the Stone Book Award, Museum of African American History; Mary Nickliss Prize, Organization of American Historians; Joan Kelly Memorial Prize, American Historical Association; Littleton-Griswold Prize, American Historical Association; and The Deep South Book Prize, Frances S. Sumersell Center for the Study of the South. It was a finalist for the Lincoln Prize, Gettysburg College and the Gilder Lehrman Institute; and the Longman-History Today Book Prize.
Hunter’s new project is “The African American Marriage Gap in the Twentieth Century.” She is also co-authoring The Making of a People: A History of African-Americans with Robin D. G. Kelley and Earl Lewis, under contract with W. W. Norton Press.
Hunter teaches African American History to 1865, History of African-American Families, Comparative Slavery in the Americas, and African-American Women’s History.
