Adriane D. Lentz-Smith, Associate Professor of History

Please note: Adriane has left the "African & African American Studies" group at Duke University; some info here might not be up to date.

Adriane Lentz-Smith is Associate Professor of History and African & African American Studies at Duke University where she teaches courses on modern U. S. and African-American history. The author of Freedom Struggles: African Americans and World War I (Harvard, 2009), Lentz-Smith researches and writes about Black freedom struggles and state power in the long twentieth century. Her work can be found in such journals as Modern American History, Southern Cultures, and American Quarterly. 

Lentz-Smith works to bring scholars into conversation with broad publics. She has served as an historical consultant for documentaries, television shows and podcasts in the U. S. and Europe and has been featured on various radio programs and podcasts as well as in the PBS documentaries, Voice of Freedom, Forgotten Hero, American Diplomat, and The Great War. As a senior fellow in Duke’s Kenan Institute for Ethics, she hosts the community conversations series, “The Ethics of Now,” which brings authors, journalists, policy makers, and scholars to Durham to discuss matters of pressing importance to the North Carolina community and beyond.

Her current project, “The Slow Death of Sagon Penn: State Violence and the Twilight of Civil Rights,” explores how state violence and white supremacy reconstituted each other in the wake of the civil rights gains of the 1960s by tracing the aftermath of one young man’s deadly encounter with the police in 1980s San Diego.  Lentz-Smith holds a BA in History from Harvard-Radcliffe and a PhD in History from Yale University. She lives in Durham, North Carolina with her family.

Contact Info:

Office Location:	Dept of History, Classroom Bldg, Box 90719, Durham, NC 27708-0719
Office Phone:	(919) 684-2837
Email Address:
Web Page:	http://www.aas.duke.edu/aaas/~adl16

Teaching (Spring 2026):

• HISTORY 348.01, CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT Synopsis

  Class Bldg 240, MW 01:25 PM-02:40 PM

  (also cross-listed as AAAS 243.01, RIGHTS 348.01)

• HISTORY 703S.01, FOCUSING ON TCHNG & PEDAGOGY Synopsis

  Class Bldg 106, W 06:30 PM-09:00 PM

Office Hours:

By appointment

Education:

Ph.D.	Yale University	2005
BA	Harvard University	1996

Specialties:

African Diaspora
United States and Canada
Race and Ethnicity
Human Rights and Social Movements
Women, Gender and Sexuality
War, Military and Society
Cultural History

Research Interests: United States History, African American History, African Americans and the World

My interests lie in African American history and the history of the US & the World. My 2009 book, Freedom Struggles: African Americans and World War I, looks at the black freedom struggle in the World War I years, with a particular focus on manhood, citizenship claims, and the international experience. My recent research explores how African Americans engaged the world in the age of Cold War civil rights, and how their participation in US state and empire set the horizons of their freedom struggles.

Keywords:

African American soldiers • African Americans--Civil rights--History--20th century

Current Ph.D. Students  

• David T. Romine  
• Stephanie R. Rytilahti  

Representative Publications   (More Publications)   (search)

1. Lentz-Smith, A, Freedom Struggles: African Americans & World War I (2009), Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass [catalog.php]
2. Lentz-Smith, A, Reid’s Obama Blunder and What it Means, History News Network (January, 2010) [html]