Ada Ferrer

Ada Ferrer is Professor of History and Latin American and Caribbean Studies at New York University. She holds an AB in English from Vassar College, an MA in History from the University of Texas at Austin, and PhD in History from the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on the history of slavery, race, and revolution in Latin America, with a particular interest in the history of Cuba, Haiti, and the Caribbean. She is also interested in questions of historical method, archives, and historical writing.

Her first book, Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation, and Revolution, 1868-1898 (University of North Carolina Press, 1999), explored the history of racism and antiracism in Cuba’s wars of independence. It received the 2000 Berkshire Book Prize for the best first book by a woman in any field of history. A French translation was published by Pérseides (Paris) in 2010 and Spanish translation by Editorial de Ciencias Sociales (Havana) in 2011. Her second book, Freedom’s Mirror: Cuba and Haiti in the Age of Revolution (Cambridge University Press, 2014) examines the links between the Haitian Revolution in Saint-Domingue and the entrenchment of slavery in colonial Cuba. It has been awarded six book prizes: The 2015 Friedrich Katz Prize (for the best book in Latin American History) and the James A. Rawley Prize (for the best book in Atlantic History) from American Historical Association, the 2015 Haiti Illumination Book Prize, Haitian Studies Association, the 2015 Marysa Navarro Best Book Award from New England Council of Latin American Studies, and the 2015 Frederick Douglass Book Prize for the Best Book on Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition.

She continues to work on the 1812 antislavery conspiracy led by free black carpenter in Havana, José Antonio Aponte, while also doing research on several other projects on C.L.R. James, Antonio Maceo, Cádiz, and Maine (the state, not the ship).