Nell Irvin Painter

Nell Irvin Painter
Born	Nell Elizabeth Irvin (1942-08-02) August 2, 1942 Houston, Texas, United States
Alma mater	University of California at Berkeley University of California at Los Angeles Harvard University
Occupation(s)	Historian Author
Employer	Princeton University (emerita)
Known for	African American Literature; American History; American Slavery
Spouse	Glenn R. Shafer
Parent(s)	Frank Irvin, Dona Irvin
Website	Website of Historian Nell Irvin Painter

Nell Irvin Painter (born Nell Elizabeth Irvin; August 2, 1942) is an American historian notable for her works on southern history of the nineteenth century. She is retired from Princeton University, and served as president of the Organization of American Historians. She also served as president of the Southern Historical Association.

Biography

She was born Nell Irvin to Dona and Frank E. Irvin, Sr. She had an older brother Frank who died young. Her family moved from Houston, Texas, to Oakland, California when she was ten weeks old. This was part of the second wave of the Great Migration of millions of African Americans from the Deep South to urban centers. Some of their relatives had been in California since the 1920s. The Irvins went to California in the 1940s with the pull of increasing jobs in the defense industry. Nell attended the Oakland Public Schools, including Oakland Technical High School, from which she graduated in 1959.

Her mother Dona Irvin held a degree from Houston College for Negroes (1937), and later taught in the public schools of Oakland. Her father had to drop out of college in 1937 during the Great Depression; he eventually trained for work as a laboratory technician. He worked for years at the University of California at Berkeley, where he trained many students in lab techniques.

Painter earned her B.A. - Anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley in 1964. During her undergraduate years, she studied French medieval history at the University of Bordeaux, France, 1962–63. She also studied abroad at the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana, 1965–66. In 1967, she completed an M.A. at the University of California at Los Angeles. In 1974, she earned an M.A. and Ph.D. at Harvard University. She returned to study and earned a B.F.A. at Rutgers University in 2009. Painter has received honorary degrees from Dartmouth College, Wesleyan University, and Yale University, among other institutions. She received a Candace Award from the National Coalition of 100 Black Women in 1986.

Marriage and family

• In 1989, Painter married the mathematician Glenn Shafer, co-creator of the Dempster–Shafer theory.

Publications

In addition to many reviews, essays and articles, Painter has written seven books as of 2010:

• The Narrative of Hosea Hudson: His Life as a Negro Communist in the South, 1979;
• Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas After Reconstruction. Norton. 1976. ISBN 978-0-393-00951-4.
• Standing at Armageddon: The United States, 1877-1919. W.W. Norton. 1989. ISBN 978-0-393-30588-3.
• Sojourner Truth: A Life, a Symbol. W.W. Norton. 1997. ISBN 978-0-393-31708-4.
• Southern History Across the Color Line. UNC Press Books. 2002. ISBN 978-0-8078-5360-3.
• Creating Black Americans: African-American History and Its Meanings, 1619 to the Present. Oxford University Press. 2005. ISBN 978-0-19-513755-2.
• The History of White People, 2010; The History of White People. W. W. Norton. 18 April 2011. ISBN 978-0-393-07949-4.

External links

• Inventory of the Nell Irvin Painter Papers, Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Duke University
• "Nell Irvin Painter", Faculty, Princeton University
• Appearances on C-SPAN
  • Booknotes interview with Painter on Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol, December 8, 1996.
  • In Depth interview with Painter, January 6, 2008
• Interview with Painter on "New Books in African American Studies"