Jeanne Theoharis graduated from Harvard College in 1991 with dual concentrations in Afro-American, and Women's Studies.[5] She then went on to pursue a PhD, at the University of Michigan in American Culture.[6][7] Theoharis is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College at the CUNY. In her work as a political science professor she specializes in contemporary politics of race and gender, social policy, urban studies and 20th century African American history.[8] Theoharis is also the author of numerous books and articles on the Black freedom struggle, including the NAACP Image award-winning The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks and A More Beautiful and Terrible History, which won the 2018 Brooklyn Public Library Prize in Nonfiction. Theoharis' book The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks was adapted into an award-winning documentary directed by Johanna Hamilton and Yoruba Richen and executive produced by Soledad O'Brien for NBC-Peacock, where she served as a consulting producer. The documentary won a Peabody Award and a Television Academy Honor Award.
In 2013, Theoharis co-created, a roundtable discussion program entitled Conversations in Black Freedom Studies at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture with Sarah Lawrence professor Komozi Woodard, and Lehman College professor Robyn C. Spencer-Antoine. The series features a roundtable of scholars and writers on the first Thursday of each month speaking on a topic in Black history, usually centered around a new book(s) in the field.[9]
Theoharis has also worked as a faculty coleader in the Narrating Change, Changing Narratives research group of the 2014-2016 Seminar on Public Engagement and Collaborative Research.[10]
Works
Essays
Theoharis, Jeanne, 2016. "MLK Would never shut down a freeway and 6 other myths about the civil rights movement and Black Lives Matter", The Root, July 15.
Theoharis, Jeanne, Burgin, Say, 2015. "Rosa Parks wasn't Meek, Passive or Naive--and 7 Other Things You Probably Didn't Learn in School", The Nation, December 1.
Marchevsky, Alejandra, and Jeanne Theoharis, 2006. Not working: Latina immigrants, low-wage jobs, and the failure of welfare reform. NYU Press.
Marchevsky, Alejandra, Theoharis, Jeanne, 2016. "Why It Matters That Hillary Clinton Championed Welfare Reform", The Nation, March 1.
Coauthored: "Charlottesville belies racism’s deep roots in the North".[11]
^Nell Irvin Painter (March 29, 2013). "Mother of the Movement". The New York Times. Retrieved 7 August 2015. Richly informative, calmly passionate and much needed, "The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks" completes the portrait of a working-class activist who looked poverty and discrimination squarely in the face and never stopped rebelling against them, in the segregated South and in the segregated North.