Lisa Monroe

Lisa A. Monroe is project manager at the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition (GLC) at the MacMillan Center at Yale University, where she coordinates “Legacies of American Slavery: Reckoning With the Past,” a collaborative program with the Council on Independent Colleges. She holds a B.A. in English Literature from Towson University and a Master of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University. Lisa taught college-level writing for more than a decade in Baltimore and New Haven. For several years, she co-led BookTalk, a popular citywide reading group at the main branch of the Enoch Pratt Library in Baltimore, her hometown. In New Haven, she extended her public humanities work, co-founding Social Justice C.A.L.L., a community reading group focused on collective Black history education. The group’s local activism focused on promoting literacy and direct engagement in projects, such as the Colored Convention Movement’s transcription of Frederick Douglass’ archived papers, and donating Black history books to New Haven youth. Currently, Lisa is a doctoral student in the History of Education Program at Teachers College, Columbia University, where she examines the intersection between U.S. public school curricula, the construction of American citizenship, ideas of national identity, and the American narrative. Her recent research examines the Black women’s club movement in Connecticut.