September 2023 – August 2024
Kate Masur is the Board of Visitors Professor of History at Northwestern University. Masur returns to the ABF for her second term as a Visiting Scholar following an initial period of research in the 2018-19 academic year. Masur is a historian of race, politics, and law in the U.S. who received her Ph.D. in American Culture from the University of Michigan in 2001.
Over the course of her career, Masur’s research has focused on the social, political, and legal history of the United States, with particular emphasis on race, slavery, and emancipation in the 19th century.
Masur’s recent book, Until Justice Be Done: America’s First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction (W.W. Norton, 2021) was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History and winner of the Littleton-Griswold Prize from the American Historical Association, the John Phillip Reid Book Award from the American Society for Legal History, and the John Nau Book Prize in American Civil War Era History. Working with artist Liz Clarke, she recently completed a graphic history of Reconstruction that will be published in 2024. Masur regularly works with K-12 teachers and speaks with the media about historical topics.
During her time as a Visiting Scholar, Masur will complete an article on the politics of race, law, and law-breaking in antebellum Illinois, advance work on several other articles, and conduct preliminary research for a new book-length project.