PROFESSOR

Professor Harris-Perry is the Maya Angelou Presidential Chair in the Department of Politics and International Affairs and the Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Wake Forest University. Professor Harris-Perry served as the inaugural Executive Director of the Pro Humanitate Institute from 2015-2018. She is the founder and president of the Anna Julia Cooper Center and founding Director of Wake the Vote. Dr. Harris-Perry is the first African American woman to earn a Ph.D. in Political Science from Duke University. She has served on the faculties of some of America’s most prestigious universities before returning to her undergraduate alma mater in July 2014.

From the lecture "Who's Choosin' Who? Race, Gender, and the New American Politics" by Melissa Harris-Perry, Presidential Endowed Professor of Political Science at Wake Forest University, founding director of Anna Julia Cooper Project on Gender, Race, and Politics in the South, MSNBC host, columnist for the Nation, and author of Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America.

Current COUrses

Syllabi, lesson plans, and speaker series accompanying Professor Harris-Perry’s recent courses are available in several open source formats including on the webpage of the Anna Julia Cooper Center. Recent course include:

Black Lives Matter

Disaster, Race, and American Politics

Farming, Food and Power

Girls Stories: Race, Politics and Pedagogy

African American Politics

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Anna Julia cooper center

Professor Harris-Perry is the Founder and President of the Anna Julia Cooper Center. AJC Center supports, generates, and communicates innovative research at the intersections of gender, race, and place, sustaining relationships between partners in the academe and in communities in order to ask new questions, reframe critical issues, and pursue equitable outcomes.

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Wake THE VOTE

MHP directs Wake the Vote, an innovative civic learning and democratic engagement experience offering students the opportunity to form a diverse cohort, examine issues central to local and national elections, build competencies for engaged citizenship, and experience American democracy from the front lines through travel, participation, program planning, social media curation and writing.