Participant Info
- First Name
- Ava
- Last Name
- Purkiss
- Country
- United States
- State
- MI Michigan
- apurkiss@umich.edu
- Affiliation
- University of Michigan
- Website URL
- Keywords
- Race + gender + health, black women’s history, African American history, modern American history, women and gender studies, fitness culture, fat studies, history of medicine
- Availability
- Media Contact
- Additional Contact Information
- PhD
- PhD
Personal Info
- Photo
- About Me
I am an historian and Assistant Professor of American Culture and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan. My research interests lie at the intersection of race, gender, and health. My book-in-progress examines African American women’s physical exercise in the twentieth century, with attention to how exercise enabled black women to express both literal and figurative fitness for citizenship. This work places black women squarely within the history of American fitness culture and compels scholars to rethink assumptions about black women’s mobility, physicality, and definitions of health.
- Recent Publications
Purkiss, Ava. ‘“Beauty Secrets: Fight Fat’: Black Women’s Aesthetics, Exercise, and Fat Stigma, 1900-1930s.” Journal of Women’s History 29, no. 2 (Summer 2017): 14-37.
- Media Coverage
- Country Focus
- Expertise by Geography
- United States
- Expertise by Chronology
- 20th century, 21st century
- Expertise by Topic
- Gender, Medicine, Race, Women
