Graduate Student Bios

Kaisha Esty is a doctoral candidate and Warren and Beatrice Susman fellow in African American and women and gender history. Her interests lie in power, sexual politics and the State. Her dissertation, “A Crusade Against the Despoiler of Virtue: Black Women, Sexual Purity, and the Gendered Politics of the Negro Problem, 1840-1920” analyzes how African American women’s sexual conservatism created a radical women’s rights framework around consent. Kaisha earned her BA and Masters of Research in American Studies at the University of Nottingham, UK. Her research has been supported and recognized by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the African American Intellectual Society and the Center for Engaged Scholarship.