Westenley Alcenat

WES ALCENAT is an historian of the nineteenth century U.S and Caribbean. His scholarship covers the shared histories of African-Americans, the African Diaspora and nations in the Atlantic World. His scholarship explores the radicalism and ideologies of African-American settlers who emigrated to Haiti in the nineteenth century. Wes’s academic interests have intersected with public history and equity in higher education to highlight histories of marginalized groups inside the university and provide critical policy recommendations. Wes is a past recipient of the Richard Hofstadter Fellowship from Columbia University. He has been awarded fellowships from the Library Company of Philadelphia, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Hoover Institution’s Library and Archives, and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, the Social Science Research Council (SSRC)-Mellon Mays Graduate Initiative Grants. In 2015-16 he was a resident scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a visiting fellow at the Weatherhead Initiative on Global History (WIGH) at Harvard University. Wes has written or provided commentary for The Jacobin Magazine, Theroot.com, and The Immanent Frame and Truthout.com. He is also a contributing guest writer for Black Perspectives Blog, the publication branch for the African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS). Wes was trained by historian Eric Foner, Clinton DeWitt Professor of History at Columbia University. He is a native of Haiti and partly grew up in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area in Minnesota. He now calls the BedStuy neighborhood in Brooklyn home.