Tiana Wilson earned an Organization of American Historians dissertation award

Tiana Wilson, assistant professor in the University of Pittsburgh Department of Africana Studies, is the 2024 recipient of the Organization of American Historians’ (OAH) Lerner-Scott Prize, which recognizes the best PhD dissertation in U.S. women’s history.

Wilson’s dissertation — “Revolution and Struggle: The Enduring Legacy of the Third World Women’s Alliance, 1968–2010,” completed at the University of Texas at Austin under the direction of Ashley D. Farmer — provides a fresh examination of the Third World Women’s Alliance, an often-overlooked organization that held membership of not only Black women but also Latina, Asian and Native American women.

According to OAH, “Wilson’s craft in incorporating original sources, such as articles, political speeches, oral histories and untapped sources” has broadened historical debates on the organization. This has helped showcase the legacies of the global Black Power movement, Third World feminism and Black women’s transnational networks in the late 20th century.

The dissertation is built around a framework of “double jeopardy.” Her work further enhances the current historiography on Black women’s activism to show the history of how Black feminists from New York to the Bay Area have shaped conversations on liberation, confronting racial oppression in the U.S., and connecting their battles to other global liberation movements.

— Nick France