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About Me

I am a historian of race, gender, and confinement in the American South and I hold a Ph.D. in History from Indiana University.

Before entering the academy, I led a domestic violence/sexual assault program and a significant reentry initiative in New York City, assisting women and men in their transition from incarceration to society. I also served as a lecturer of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York. My forthcoming book Confined Femininity: Race, Gender, and Incarceration in Kentucky, 1865-1920, explores the experiences of confined African American women in Kentucky from Reconstruction to the Progressive Era, explicitly illuminating the lives of confined Black women by examining places other than carceral locales as arenas of confinement, including mental health institutions and domestic spaces. My work has been supported by the Kentucky Historical Society, the Filson Historical Society, the Gilder Lehrman Institute for American History, the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), and the Coordinating Council of Women Historians.

My second book project explores Italian migration and experiences in the Mississippi Delta between the Gilded Age and the mid-twentieth century. It interrogates the Italian padrone system as a form of confinement and relationships between Italians and African Americans because of shared proximity and experience in the rural Jim Crow South. 

 

To learn more about my work, visit www.charlenejfletcher.com  

Recent Publications

Book Chapters

“Home Ain’t Always Where the Heart Is: African American Women, Confinement, and Domestic Violence in the Gilded Age Bluegrass,” in Slavery and Freedom in the Bluegrass State: Revisiting My Old Kentucky. (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2023).

Refereed Journal Articles

Fletcher, Charlene J. “Borderland Business: Slavery and Convict Leasing in Antebellum Kentucky.” Journal of Arizona History 64, no. 3 (2023): 331-339. muse.jhu.edu/article/913313.

Fletcher, Charlene J., Alessandra LaRocca Link, and Matthew E. Stanley. “Black and Indigenous Histories of the Ohio Valley,” Ohio Valley History 20, no. 5 (2020): 1-6. muse.jhu.edu/article/771366.

Book Reviews

Fletcher-Brown, C.  Review of Liberty’s Prisoners: Carceral Culture in Early America, by Jen Manion, Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, 115, no. 3 (Summer 2017): 419-421.

Fletcher, Charlene J. “Reaching Back: Convict Leasing and the Trusty System in the Nineteenth Century,” Journal of Civil and Human Rights 1 January 2022; 8 (1): 68–72. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/23784253.8.1.07

Web-Based Publications

Fletcher, Charlene. “Looking Back: Convict Leasing and the Trusty System.” Black Perspectives. January 14, 2020. https://www.aaihs.org/looking-back-convict-leasing-and-the-trusty-system/

Fletcher-Brown, Charlene. “Early Stories of Domestic Violence Raise Awareness, Foster Healing.” The Blog of the Kentucky Historical Society. November 4, 2016. http://history.ky.gov/early-stories-of-domestic-violenceraiseawareness-foster-healing/

Fletcher-Brown, C. Multiple Submissions in Significant People in African American History, BlackPast.org.

https://www.blackpast.org/author/fletcher-browncharlenej/  (2014-2015)

Fletcher-Brown, C. “The Palmer Raids” 1914-1918 Online: International Encyclopedia of the First World War.

http://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/Palmer_Raids (2014)

Fletcher-Brown, C. “U.S. Race Riots” 1914-1918 Online: International Encyclopedia of the First World War.

http://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/U.S._Race_Riots (2014)

Media Coverage

Social Media

Instagram @drcjfcletcher

Country Focus

United States, Italy

Expertise by Geography

United States

Expertise by Chronology

19th century, 20th century

Expertise by Topic

Gender, Local & Regional, Migration & Immigration, Museums, Public History, Race, Sexuality, Sexual Violence, Slavery, Women