Daina Ramey Berry is an American
historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human species; as well as the ...
and academic who is the Michael Douglas Dean of Humanities and Fine Arts at the
University of California at Santa Barbara
The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Barbara County, California, United States. Tracing its roots back to 1891 as an independent teachers college, UCSB joine ...
. She was formerly the associate dean of the graduate school and chair of the history department at the University of Texas at Austin. She studies gender and slavery, as well as black women's history in the United States. She has written books about the connection between the idea of skilled work and the gender of enslaved people in
antebellum Georgia
The history of Georgia in the United States of America spans pre-Columbian time to the present-day U.S. state of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. The area was inhabited by Native American tribes for thousands of years. A modest Spanish presence w ...
, the
economic history
Economic history is the study of history using methodological tools from economics or with a special attention to economic phenomena. Research is conducted using a combination of historical methods, statistical methods and the Applied economics ...
of
slavery in the United States
The legal institution of human chattel slavery, comprising the enslavement primarily of List of ethnic groups of Africa, Africans and African Americans, was prevalent in the United States of America from its founding in 1776 until 1865 ...
, and the historical contributions of African American women to the politics and governance of the United States and to securing their own rights.
Education
Berry attended the
University of California, Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school the ...
, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in history in 1992.
She continued to study at the University of California, Los Angeles as a graduate student.
[ In 1994, she earned a Master of Arts in African American studies and in 1998, she received a PhD in United States history.][
]
Career
In 1998, Berry became a professor of history and African American studies at Arizona State University
Arizona State University (Arizona State or ASU) is a public university, public research university in Tempe, Arizona, United States. Founded in 1885 as Territorial Normal School by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, the university is o ...
. In 2000, she joined the history faculty at Michigan State University
Michigan State University (Michigan State or MSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in East Lansing, Michigan, United States. It was founded in 1855 as the Agricultural College of the State o ...
, and in 2010 she moved to the University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public university, public research university in Austin, Texas, United States. Founded in 1883, it is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. With 53,082 stud ...
, where she was affiliated with the history department and the department of African and African Diaspora Studies. In 2018 she was named Oliver H. Radkey Regents Professor of History and in 2019, she became associate dean of the graduate school at the University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public university, public research university in Austin, Texas, United States. Founded in 1883, it is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. With 53,082 stud ...
. In 2022, she became the Michael Douglas Dean of Humanities and Fine Arts.
Research
Berry published her first book, ''Swing the Sickle for the Harvest is Ripe: Gender and Slavery in Antebellum Georgia'', in 2007. Through a comparison of Glynn County, Georgia
Glynn County is located in the Southeast Georgia, southeastern part of the U.S. state of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population was 84,499. The county seat is Brunswick, Georgia, Brunswic ...
and Wilkes County, Georgia
Wilkes County is a county located in the east central portion of the U.S. state of Georgia. As of the 2020 census, the population was 9,565. The county seat is the city of Washington.
Referred to as "Washington-Wilkes", the county seat and ...
during the early 19th century, Berry studies the relationship between the idea of skilled labor and gender in understanding enslaved peoples' work, and more broadly she examines the relationship between enslaved peoples' labor and their family and community relations. She contrasts the effects of the more closed system in Glynn County, which was more restrictive for the mobility of enslaved people but reinforced stronger and more stable family bonds, with the more open system of Wilkes County. She describes these systems through a detailed social and economic micro-history of the two counties.
In 2017, Berry published the book ''The Price for their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation''. In ''The Price for their Pound of Flesh'', Berry studies the economic history of slavery in the United States, examining how a price was assigned to the bodies of enslaved people in America from before they were born until after they died. Berry proposes four types of value that an enslaved person could hold: their assessed value, as determined by others for the purposes of accounting and sale; their market value, which was a function of local demand; their soul value, derived from inherent spiritual self-worth and reinforced by familial and communal connections; and their ghost value, evaluated by body broker
A body broker (also non-transplant tissue banks) is a firm or an individual that buys and sells cadavers or human body parts.
Whereas the market for organ transplantation is heavily regulated in the United States, the use of cadaver parts for res ...
s who engaged in the sale of human cadaver
A cadaver, often known as a corpse, is a Death, dead human body. Cadavers are used by medical students, physicians and other scientists to study anatomy, identify disease sites, determine causes of death, and provide tissue (biology), tissue to ...
s. Through this categorisation scheme, Berry is able to produce an economic history which is not completely centered on the market. Rather, by including the inherent self-value that many enslaved people held through the idea of soul value, Berry also produces an intellectual history of the thoughts, emotions, and ideas of enslaved people when considering their own value. Berry's focus on the factors that produced assigned value, as well as the value of unborn slaves, also makes a contribution to the historical literature on the violent role of gender and reproduction in the systems of American slavery.[
In 2020, Berry published the book ''A Black Women's History of the United States'' with coauthor Kali Nicole Gross. The book examines the history of African American women through the narratives of eleven women who either had a significant impact on the history of the United States or whose lives reflect something about Black women's lives in American history. Two theses of the book are that African American women have been under-recognised for their core role in American history, and that the ]rights
Rights are law, legal, social, or ethics, ethical principles of freedom or Entitlement (fair division), entitlement; that is, rights are the fundamental normative rules about what is allowed of people or owed to people according to some legal sy ...
that have been won by African American women were gained primarily through their own struggle and activism. Specifically, Berry and Gross argue that political acts by African American women have crucially clarified the idea of liberty in American politics, exposed failures in mainstream approaches to democracy, and demonstrated how to correct those failures. Berry and Gross selected stories about historical figures who are not well-known, in what was described in ''Kirkus Reviews
''Kirkus Reviews'' is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus. The magazine's publisher, Kirkus Media, is headquartered in New York City. ''Kirkus Reviews'' confers the annual Kirkus Prize to authors of fiction, no ...
'' as a "wide-ranging search-and-rescue mission for black female activists, trailblazers, and others who have left a mark".[ ''A Black Women's History of the United States'' was listed as one of "the 10 books to read in February" of 2019 by '']The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...
'', as well as one of "the 22 most anticipated books of February 2020" by ''Bustle magazine
''Bustle'' is an online American women's magazine founded in August 2013 by Bryan Goldberg. It positions news and politics alongside articles about beauty, celebrities, and fashion trends. By September 2016, the website had 50 million monthly rea ...
''.
Berry was a co-editor of two more books: ''Slavery and Freedom in Savannah'' (2014) and ''Sexuality & Slavery: Reclaiming Intimate Histories in the Americas'' (2018).[ Berry's work has been cited, or she has been interviewed, in news outlets like '']The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'', ''The Washington Post'', and NPR
National Public Radio (NPR) is an American public broadcasting organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It serves as a national Radio syndication, syndicator to a network of more ...
.
Selected works
*''Swing the Sickle for the Harvest is Ripe: Gender and Slavery in Antebellum Georgia'' (2007)
*''The Price for their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation'' (2017)
*''A Black Women's History of the United States'', with Kali Nicole Gross (2020)
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Berry, Daina Ramey
Living people
American women social scientists
21st-century American women writers
20th-century American women writers
21st-century American historians
20th-century American historians
Historians of the United States
African-American historians
Historians of African Americans
American women historians
University of California, Los Angeles alumni
Arizona State University faculty
Michigan State University faculty
University of Texas at Austin faculty
Year of birth missing (living people)
20th-century African-American women writers
20th-century African-American writers
21st-century African-American women writers
21st-century African-American writers
Historians of slavery
21st-century African-American academics
21st-century American academics