Whitney Battle-Baptiste

Battle-Baptiste grew up in the Bronx and was exposed to history through her mother, who taught on Long Island. She attended Virginia State University, an HBCU in Petersburg, with the same goal, then earned her master's degree in history at The College of William and Mary. At a summer internship, she met several African-American women who were archaeologists, and this sparked her interest in the subject.

She pursued her Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin in the African Diaspora program in anthropology, and focused her studies on archaeology through the lens of race and gender. Her dissertation, titled “A Yard to Sweep: Race, Gender and the Enslaved Landscape” was published in 2004 and based on her research at Andrew Jackson's Tennessee plantation, The Hermitage. It explores the gender power dynamics in captive African domestic areas.[4]

Battle-Baptiste has participated in archaeological excavations at Colonial Williamsburg, The Hermitage, the Rich Neck Plantation in Virginia the W.E.B. Du Bois Boyhood Homesite in Great Barrington, Massachusetts and the Millars Plantation on the Bahamian island of Eleuthera.[2][5] Battle-Baptiste was named the new Director of W.E.B. Du Bois Center at UMass Amherst in January 2015. "The W.E.B. Du Bois Center at the UMass Amherst Libraries was established in 2009 to engage the nation and the world in discussion and scholarship about the global issues involving race, labor and social justice."[2]

• Ph.D., Department of Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin, 2004
• M.A., Department of History, College of William and Mary, 2000
• B.A., Departments of History and Secondary Education, Virginia State University, 1994

• Battle-Baptiste, Whitney (2011). Black Feminist Archaeology. Chicago: Left Coast Press. p. 199. ISBN 978-1-59874-379-1.
• Battle-Baptiste, Whitney, (2011), "In this here place: Interpreting Enslaved Homeplaces", In: A. Ogundiran, T. Falola (eds.), Archaeology of Atlantic Africa and the African Diaspora, Indiana University Press, pp. 233–248.
• Battle-Baptiste, Whitney, (2010), ""Sweepin' Spirits: Power and Transformation on the Plantation Landscape", In: A. Sherene Baugher and Suzanne M. Spencer-Wood (eds.), Archaeology and Preservation of Gendered Landscapes,, Springer Press, pp. 81–94.
• Battle-Baptiste, Whitney, (2004), "A Space of Our Own: Redefining the Enslaved Household at Andrew Jackson's Hermitage Plantation", In: K. Barile, J. Brandon (eds.), In Household Chores and Household Choices: Theorizing the Domestic Sphere in Historical Archaeology, University of Alabama Press, pp. 33–50.