Position: Assistant Professor
Fields: United States, African American, Indigenous
Office: 214 Old Horticulture
Phone: 517-884-4918
Email: parke492@msu.edu
Dr. Parker is a historian of nineteenth-century chattel slavery in the U.S., African American, and American Indian history. She is currently working on her book manuscript, Trails of Tears and Freedom: Black Life in Indian Slave Country, 1830-1866 which examines the lives of enslaved and self-liberated individuals of African and Afro-Native descent in Choctaw and Chickasaw communities in nineteenth-century Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). Dr. Parker has written academic articles and essays for The Journal of African American History, Oxford Handbook of American Women’s and Gender History, the Oxford Bibliographies of African American Studies, and the East Texas Historical Journal. Her research has received funding and awards from several organizations, including the Association of American University Women (AAUW), the Mellon Scholars Program at the Library Company in Philadelphia, the Organization of American Historians (OAH), the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at The University of Texas at Austin, The University of North Texas, the Texas State Historical Association, the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South, the Western History Association, and the Center for the Study of the American South at UNC Chapel Hill. Her work has also been featured on several public history projects and websites, including the New York Times best seller 400 Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019, The History Channel, the podcast Learning for Justice, and The University of Texas at Austin’s Not Even Past and 15 Minute History.
Courses Taught and Prepared to Teach:
- HST 201 Historical Methods and Skills
- HST 281 Atlantic Slavery
- HST 309 American Indian History: Pre-Contact to the Present
- HST 310 African American History to 1876
- IAH 208: Music and Culture: Understanding Black History Through Black Music, 1500s-Present