Mia Bay Named Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Professor of American History

Mia Bay joins Penn as the Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Professor of American History. A well-recognized scholar of late modern American intellectual and cultural history with a focus on African-American history, Bay comes to Penn from Rutgers University, where she served as Professor of History and Director of the Rutgers Center for Race and Ethnicity. She has published two highly acclaimed books, The White Image in the Black Mind: African-American Ideas About White People 1830-1925 and To Tell the Truth Freely: The Life of Ida B. Wells. Bay is the recipient of numerous honors, awards, and grants, including a Mellon Sawyer Seminar Grant, an Alphonse Fletcher Sr. Fellowship, a National Humanities Center Fellowship and an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship.

The Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Chair of American History is one of three chairs created by the Board of Trustees from the lifetime gifts and estates of Roy and Jeannette Nichols, longtime members of the history faculty. In addition, Roy Nichols served as Dean of Graduate Studies in Penn Arts and Sciences and as Vice Provost of the University, while Jeannette Nichols served as chair of the graduate group in economic history.