Camille A. Borders
Assistant Professor of History
About
Ph.D., Princeton University
MPhil, The University of Oxford, Magdalen College
B.A., Washington University in St. Louis
Camille Borders is a cultural historian of nineteenth century United States History with a deep grounding in Black Feminist methodologies. Her research explores how Black people in America built, resisted, and thrived under the shadows of social and political domination. Her current book manuscript, Black Feeling, centers on the intimate lives of African American women living through the transition from slavery to freedom. Camille’s work has been supported by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) and the American Antiquarian Society. Her writing has appeared in the Huffington Post, USA Today, The Chicago Review of Books, and The Atlantic. Dr. Borders is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis. She earned a master’s degree in U.S. History at the University of Oxford where she was a Rhodes Scholar and a Ph.D. in History at Princeton University.
Expertise
Current Courses
Fall Semester 2026
African American Women’s History: The United States at 250
What new perspectives emerge when Black women are placed at the center of U.S. history rather than at its margins? This course examines African American women’s history from slavery to the present day and considers how Black women's lives have been enduring sites of contested citizenship, labor, a…
Winter Semester 2027
Black Resistance from the Civil War to Civil Rights
From antebellum slavery through twentieth-century struggles for civil rights, black Americans have resisted political violence, economic marginalization, and second-class citizenship using strategies ranging from respectability to radicalism. Engaging with both historical and modern scholarship, lit…
Rise of the American Empire
During the nineteenth century, the United States experienced one of the most dramatic political transformations in world history, rising from an imperiled post-revolutionary state to become a global empire. This course examines the diverse experiences of those who lived through this era of dizzying …