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Paula J. Giddings (born 1947 in Yonkers, New York) is a writer and an African-American historian. She is the author of When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America and In Search of Sisterhood: Delta Sigma Theta and the Challenge of the Black Sorority Movement and Ida: A Sword Among Lions. She is currently the Elizabeth A. Woodson 1922 Professor Emerita of Africana Studies at Smith College, subsequent to her 2017 retirement. Prior to joining the faculty at Smith, she was on the faculty at Spelman College, where she was recognized as a United Negro Fund Distinguished Scholar. She also was a faculty member of the Douglass College at Rutgers University where she held the Laurie Chair in Women's Studies. Giddings has also taught at Princeton University, North Carolina Central University and Duke University. She is also a member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority. During her career, she made contributions to American history, Women's Studies, and African American Studies that center African American women in order to offer greater inclusion and representation. These works have been foundational in the study of African American women's feminism, history, and activism, as the number of books and journal articles citing her body of work show.

Contents

 * Early life
 * Education
 * Activism
 * Career
 * Selected Publications
 * Awards and Honors
 * External links
 * References

Early life
Paula Giddings grew up in a predominantly white neighborhood in Yonkers, New York, where she experienced isolation and racism from her white neighbors. These experiences would deeply shape her entree into activism as a teen and career as a journalist, book editor, and subsequently an academic historian.

Education
Giddings enrolled in the historically Black college, Howard University in 1965, to gain a sense of community that she was refused in her hometown. It was at Howard that she gained insight into her Blackness as it shaped her writing, politics, self-esteem, pride, and appearance in ways that continued after she graduated and throughout her career. It was at Howard that Giddings launched her literary career, working on the university's newspaper beginning in her first year and subsequently becoming editor of the university's literary magazine,The Promethean in 1967 and earning a Bachelor of Arts in English in 1969.

Activism
As a teen in Yonkers, Giddings personally experienced racism and also witnessed the collective racism and violence against African Americans that lead to and occurred in reaction to the Civil Rights Movement. In an interview with filmmaker and civil rights activist Judy Richardson, Paula Giddings discussed how this set the stage for her desire to understand both oppression and resistance to it, a theme that would recur through her own activism and writing.

Pushes for change at Howard--Freshman Assembly, Homecoming Court, literary/BAM, Administration Bldg takeover, anti-sexism--against rating system men deployed against women undergrads, embrace of Black culture--dance, representations, music (gospel and jazz)

In 1975, she travelled to South Africa where she had the opportunity to meet leaders of the Anti-Apartheid Movement.

Gender

Career
Giddings is a former book editor at Random House and journalist who has written extensively on international and national issues and has been published by the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Jeune Afrique (Paris), The Nation, and Sage: A Scholarly Journal on Black Women, among other publications. Giddings joined Smith College in 2001. From 2000 until her 2017 retirement, Giddings served as the editor-in-chief of Meridians, Feminism, Race, Transnationalism, a peer-reviewed, feminist, interdisciplinary journal that publishes traditional scholarship and creative works produced by and about women of color in the United States and internationally. At Smith, Giddings also served as the department chair and honors thesis adviser of the Africana Studies Department.

Giddings received accolades upon the publication of Ida from within the academy as well as in the popular sector. Ida received the 2008 Letitia Woods Brown Book Prize from the Association of Black Women Historians, the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights Outstanding Book Award, and was the 2009 Nonfiction winner of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association Literary Award. In addition, it was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for 2008 and was named a Best Book of 2008 by both the Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune. Additionally, the book was recognized as the inaugural Duke University John Hope Franklin Research Center Book Award winner in 2011.

In 2018, Giddings was invited to deliver the Charter Day Convocation Speech at her undergraduate alma mater, Howard University.

She is a member of P.E.N., a writers’ group; The Century Association; Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, the Coalition of 100 Black Women, and serves on the boards of both the Nation Institute and the Authors’ Guild Foundation.

In 2017, she was inducted in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Selected publications

 * Ida, A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching (Amistad/Harper Collins, 2008, ISBN 0060797363)
 * Burning All Illusions: Writings from The Nation on Race 1866-2002 (Editor) (Thunder's Mouth Press, 2002, ISBN 1560253843)
 * In Search of Sisterhood: Delta Sigma Theta and the Challenge of the Black Sorority Movement (William Morrow & Co, 1988; Quill Publishers, 1995, ISBN 0688135099)
 * When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America (William Morrow & Co, 1984; Bantam Press, 1985; 2nd: William Morrow Paperbacks, 1996, ISBN 0688146503)

Awards and Honors

 * Candace Award for History, National Coalition of 100 Black Women, 1984
 * Letitia Woods Brown Book Prize from the Association of Black Women Historians, 2008
 * Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights Outstanding Book Award, 2008
 * Los Angeles Times Book Award for Biography, 2008
 * National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, 2008
 * Named a Best Book of 2008, The Washington Post
 * Named a Best Book of 2008, The Chicago Tribune.
 * Nonfiction winner of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association Literary Award, 2009
 * American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2017
 * Howard University Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award In The Field of Journalism, 2018