Background

Sharon Harley was born on August 16, 1948, in Washington, District of Columbia, United States.

Education

Sharon holds a Bachelor of Arts from St. Mary-of-the-Woods College, a Master of Arts in Teaching from Antioch College, and a Doctor of Philosophy from Howard University.

Career

Sharon Harley is an associate professor and former chair of the African American Studies Department at the University of Maryland, College Park, researches and teaches black women's labor history and racial and gender politics. Harley served as principal investigator in a two-year planning effort to create the Center for African-American Women's Labor Studies.

In 1995 Harley published The Timetables of African-American History: A Chronology of the Most Important People and Events in African-American History spans the years from 1492 to 1992, highlighting the many contributions made by black Americans and including a comprehensive index that makes the volume a good resource for scholars.

In addition to her contributions to numerous books and periodicals on gender and labor studies, Harley is the editor of Sister Circle: Black Women and Work (2002), a collection of essays by members of the Black Women and Work Collective that provides readers a fascinating look at black women in the underground economy.

Sharon edited Telling Histories: Black Women Historians in the Ivory Tower which was published in 2008. It compiles seventeen personal narratives by leading black women historians at various stages in their careers. Their essays illuminate how - first as graduate students and then as professional historians - they entered and navigated the realm of higher education, a world concerned with and dominated by whites and men. Indistinct voices and from different vantage points, the personal histories revealed here also tell the story of the struggle to establish a new scholarly field.

She is currently directing a Ford Foundation-funded national research seminar on Work in the Lives of Women of Color as part of her Center for African American Women's Labor Studies.

Achievements

• Sharon Harley is widely known as an educator and author. She distinguished herself as a researcher, teacher, and speaker frequently on black women's labor history and racial and gender politics.

Works

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  • Sister Circle: Black Women and Work

    (Although black women's labor was essential to the develop...)

    2002
  • The Afro-American Woman: Struggles & Images 1978
  • Timetables of African-American History: A Chronology of the Most Important People and Events in African-American History 1995
  • The African American Experience: A History 1992
  • One Nation Many People, Vol. 2: The United States Since 1876 1995
  • American Revolution 1993
  • Women's Labor in the Global Economy: Speaking in Multiple Voices 2007

Views

Harley has focused her career on the study of African-American women and their role in the American workplace throughout modern history.

Membership

Sharon is a member of the American Historical Association, Maryland Humanities Council, and Southern Historical Association.

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  American Historical Association , United States

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  Maryland Humanities Council , United States

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  Southern Historical Association , United States