Faculty Interview

JOINED THE DEPARTMENT

2004

BIO

Jeannette Eileen Jones is a historian of the United States, with expertise in American cultural and intellectual history, African American History and Studies, and Pre-colonial Africa. Her research foci include Gilded Age and Progressive Era America, US and the World, transimperial history, and the transnational history of race and racialization. Her research reflects her desire to contribute to the larger critical conversations taking place in these fields, specifically around the role of race in shaping American cultural and intellectual discourse and production. More precisely, Jones’s research examines the ways in which “race” as a popular and scientific category operated as a potent signifier of difference – cultural, biological, social, and political – and power in the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. However, recognizing the rising global significance of race as an organizing principle, as well as the transnational migration of ideas about race during the so-called “long nineteenth century” (1789-1919), Jones’s research extends across the Atlantic to engage with histories of Europe and Africa. Accordingly, her publications and works in progress explore the discursive relationship between American, European, and “subaltern” perspectives on imperialism, citizenship, and social belonging, as crucial aspects of the history of ideas about race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality.

BOOKS

• America in Africa: U.S. Empire, Race, and the African Question, 1847-1919 (forthcoming 2025, Yale University Press).
• In Search of Brightest Africa: Reimagining the Dark Continent in American Culture, 1884-1936 (Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press, 2010).
• Jeannette Eileen Jones and Patrick B. Sharp, eds., Darwin in Atlantic Cultures: Evolutionary Visions of Race, Gender, and Sexuality, Routledge Research in Atlantic Studies (New York and London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2010).

DIGITAL PROJECTS

• “To Enter Africa from America”: The United States, Africa, and the New Imperialism, 1847-1919 with Nadia Nurhussein, Nemata Blyden, and John Cullen Gruesser.

ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS

• Jeannette Eileen Jones, Tony Frazier, Claire Jiménez, and Sarita Garcia, “Creating More Inclusive Spaces for African American Studies and Ethnic Studies in Digital Humanities Workshops,” in Lessons Learned: Digital Humanities Workshops, eds. Laura Estill and Jennifer Guiliano, Routledge Series Digital Research in the Arts and Humanities, (New York: Routledge, 2023): 128-140.
• “‘The Land of Our Fathers’: African American Views on ‘Christian Duty,” Legitimate Trade, and the Congo Free State,” Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International 11, no. 2 (2022): 26-50.
• “How the Südwest Was Won: Transnational Currents of American Agriculture and Land Colonization in German Southwest Africa,” in German and United States Colonialism in a Connected World: Entangled Empires, ed. Janne Lahti, Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2021): 153-176.
• “‘To Enter Africa from America and America from Africa’ during the Nineteenth Century,” in Cambridge History of America and the World, Volume 2, eds. Kristin Hoganson and Jay Sexton (Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 918-955.
• “‘The Negro’s Peculiar Work’: Jim Crow and Black Discourses on US Empire, Race, and the African Question, 1877-1900,” Journal of American Studies 52 (2018): 1-28.
• “‘On the Brain of the Negro’: Race, Abolitionism, and Friedrich Tiedemann’s Scientific Discourse on the African Diaspora,”Germany and the Black Diaspora, eds. Mischa Honeck, Anne Kuhlmann-Smirnov, and Martin Klimke, GHI Studies in German History (Berghahn Books, 2013).
• “‘Brightest Africa’ in the New Negro Imagination,” in Escape from New York: The New Negro Renaissance Beyond Harlem, eds. Davarian Baldwin and Minkah Makalani (University of Minnesota Press, 2013).
• Jeannette Eileen Jones and Patrick B. Sharp, “The Descent of Darwin” in Darwin in Atlantic Cultures: Evolutionary Visions of Race, Gender, and Sexuality, Routledge Research in Atlantic Studies, eds. Jeannette Eileen Jones and Patrick B. Sharp (New York and London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2010), 1-7.
• “Simians, Negroes, and the ‘Missing Link’: Transatlantic Evolutionary Debates on the ‘Negro Question,’” in Darwin in Atlantic Cultures: Evolutionary Visions of Race, Gender, and Sexuality, Routledge Research in Atlantic Studies, eds. Jeannette Eileen Jones and Patrick B. Sharp (New York and London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2010), 191-207.
• “‘Gorilla Trails in Paradise’: Carl Akeley, Mary Bradley, and the American Search for the Missing Link,” Journal of American Culture 29:3 (September 2006): 321-336.

GRANTS, FELLOWSHIPS, AND VISITING PROFESSORSHIPS

• Mellon Foundation Grant, The US Law and Race Initiative, January 1, 2023-June 30, 2026. Principal Investigators: William G. Thomas III, Katrina Jagodinsky, and Jeannette Eileen Jones
• Leibniz ScienceCampus Visiting Professor, Summer Term 2023, Universität Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany, April 25-August 11, 2023; June 17-July 10, 2024
• NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities) Collaborative Research Grant, January 2019-December 2022. Principal Investigators: Jeannette Eileen Jones, Nadia Nurhussein, Nemata Amelia Ibitayo Blyden, and John Cullen Gruesser
• UB Center for Diversity Innovation Distinguished Visiting Scholar, 2021-22, University at Buffalo, September 1, 2021-June 30, 2022
• American Council of Learned Societies Digital Extension Grant, New Storytellers: The Research Institute in Digital Ethnic Studies, May 2019- November 2021. Principal Investigators: Joy Castro, Jeannette Eileen Jones, Kenneth Price, and William G. Thomas III
• American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship, 2020
• NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities) Collaborative Research Grant, January 2019-December 2021
• REAF (Regensburg European American Forum) Fellow, University of Regensburg, Germany, sponsored by Bayerisches Staatsministerium für Bildung und Kultus, Wissenschaft, und Kunst, Summer 2017
• Center for Digital Research in the Humanities Start-up Grant, 2013-2014
• Deutsche Bank Junior Scholar-In-Residence Fellowship, University of Heidelberg (Germany), Center for American Studies, 2007-2008

TEACHING

• HIST 111: United States History After 1877
• HIST 113 / ETHN 113: History of Hip-Hop
• HIST 115: And Justice For All – Race, Gender, & the Law in US History
• HIST 246 / ETHN 246: African American History – African Origins to 1877
• HIST 356/856 / ETHN 356 / WMNS 356/856: African-American Women’s History
• HIST 900: Introduction to Historical Study
• HIST 918 / ENGL 918 / MODL 918: Interdisciplinary Seminar in Nineteenth-Century Studies
• HIST 919 / ENGL 919 / MODL 919: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Nineteenth Century
• HIST 941: Overview of American History
• HIST 950: Graduate Seminar in Reading and Writing History
• HIST 983: Problems in Race, Ethnicity, and Identity in History
• ETHN 100: Introduction to Ethnic Studies
• ETHN 200: Introduction to African American Studies

SELECTED HONORS AND AWARDS

• Dr. Michael W. Combs Legacy Award, 2020 JGMC Hall of Fame (inaugural recipient)
• Spring 2020 Certificate of Recognition for Contributions to Students
• 2019 Annis Chaikin Sorensen Award
• 2017 Leadership Lincoln Melvin Jones Mentoring Award
• College Engagement Award, College of Arts & Sciences, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2017
• College Distinguished Teaching Award, College of Arts & Sciences, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2016
• Academic Star, College of Arts & Sciences, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Fall 2009
• Faculty of the Year Award, The Afrikan People’s Union, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2009

EXPERTISE

• U.S. History
• American Intellectual and Cultural History
• African-American History and Studies
• U.S. and the World
• Gilded Age and Progressive Era America
• Digital Humanities and Digital History
• History of Science and Science Studies
• Transnational History
• Pre-Colonial West Africa
• Black European Studies
• Black West