Ashley Howard
Drop-in hours
- Tuesdays and Thursdays, 12 - 1:30 p.m., or by appointment
Ashley Howard earned a PhD in History from the University of Illinois. She joined the University of Iowa faculty in fall 2019 coming from Loyola University, New Orleans. Her research interests include African Americans in the Midwest; the intersection between race, class, and gender; and the global history of racial violence. Her book, Midwest Unrest: 1960s Urban Rebellions and the Black Freedom Movement, on UNC Press’s Justice, Power, and Politics imprint, analyzes the uprisings grounded in the way race, class, gender, and region played critical and overlapping roles in defining resistance to racialized oppression.
Dr. Howard's work has appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education, BBC World News Hour, Al Jazeera, Financial Times, Washington Post and NPR. Her "Then the Burnings Began" article is the winner of the 2018 James L. Sellers Memorial Prize.
As an educator, Dr. Howard’s primary goal is to teach students to be effective writers, critical thinkers, and active world citizens. Students in her classes develop skills through hands-on learning, like processing questionnaires for the Louisiana on Lockdown report. She is also dedicated to sharing her scholarly knowledge outside of the traditional campus community. Specifically, Howard has greatly valued teaching opportunities where she can provide quality, university-level education to those with limited access, including underserved schools and correctional facilities.
Awards and service
- 2024 - James N. Murray Faculty Award
Awarded by: University of Iowa Division of Student Life - 2022 - Mellon Foundation Grant Recipient
Awarded by: Andrew W. Mellon Foundation - 2022 - Dorothy Schwieder Prize - Honorable Mention
Awarded by: Midwest Historical Association - 2020 - Faculty Communicating Ideas Award
Awarded by: University of Iowa Office of the Vice Provost for Research - 2018 - James L. Sellers Memorial Prize
Awarded by: Nebraska State Historical Society
Publications
Books
Midwest Unrest: 1960s Urban Rebellions and the Black Freedom Movement (UNC Press, forthcoming 2025)
Articles
- "What to the ‘Other’ Is the Midwest?” Middle West Review 9.2 (2023): 127-132.
- "Violence and Disposability at the Intersection of Twin Pandemics" Labor Studies Journal, 47.4 (2022): 493-500.
- "Whose Streets? Wielding Urban Revolts as Political Tools" The Journal of African American History, 107.2 (2022).
- "Race and Iowa History" The Annals of Iowa 80.4 (2021).
- "An American Tradition" The American Historian (2020).
- “Then the Burnings Began: Omaha’s 1966 Revolt and the Efficacy of Political Violence”
- “Linked Fates: Social media as a framing, tactical and witnessing tool in the Black Lives Matter movement” Chapter 7 in News of Baltimore: Race, Rage and the City, edited by(2017): 120-138
Commentary and popular writing
- "Opinion: Why Black Midwest and Iowa history matters"
- "MALCOLM X: 3448 Pinkney Street Omaha, Nebraska"
- "Tulsa’s ‘Black Wall Street’ teaches us about racial economic discrimination"
- "The Midwest has always been a site of Black political activism"
- "Iowa, We Must Not Rest On Our Laurels"
- "The Long, Painful History of Racial Unrest"
- "The Fight for Racial Justice Is a Movement, Not a Moment"
- United States
- Race, Ethnicity, and Indigeneity
