Leah Wright Rigueur

Harry Truman Associate Professor of History

Departments/Programs

History

Degrees

Princeton University, Ph.D.
Princeton University, M.A.
Dartmouth College, B.A.

Expertise

20th Century US political and social history; 20th Century African American history and politics; the modern American presidency; race; politics, policies, political ideologies, and political institutions; civil rights; social movements

Profile

Leah Wright Rigueur is the Harry S. Truman Associate Professor of American History at Brandeis University. Her research expertise includes 20th Century American political and social history, modern African American history, race, politics, civil rights, contemporary social movements, political ideologies and institutions, and the American presidency.

Leah is the author of the award-winning study, The Loneliness of the Black Republican: Pragmatic Politics and the Pursuit of Power. Her new book, Mourning in America: Black Men and Women in a White House, documents critical transformations in American politics in the 1980s through an exploration of political scandal and corruption, as told through two contrasting perspectives: that of black women public housing activists and of black officials in the Ronald Reagan-helmed White House.

Leah’s writing, research and commentary has been featured in outlets including ABC News, MSNBC, CNN, CBS News, PBS, NPR, A&E Networks, The History Channel, MTV News, Showtime, SiriusXM, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Politico, The Root, The New Yorker, Vogue, and Fortune Magazine. She holds a Ph.D. in History from Princeton University and a B.A. in History from Dartmouth College.

Courses Taught

HIST	151a	Conservatives and Liberals in Modern America: Race, Democracy and History in the U.S.
HIST	159b	Modern African American History
HIST	224a	Modern Black Political Thought

Awards and Honors

Brandeis University Connected PhD Grant Recipient (2020)

Scholarship

Wright Rigueur, Leah. "African Americans and the 2020 Presidential Election." LSE United States Centre Seminar on Race, Gender, and Politics. London School of Economics, London, UK. March 2020.

Wright Rigueur, Leah. "Black Voters, Gender, and the 2020 Election." Black Women’s Think Tank at Georgia Institute of Technology. Atlanta, Georgia. February 2020.

Wright Rigueur, Leah. "Super Tuesday Results." 2020: Shape the World. London School of Economics, London, UK. March 2020.

Wright Rigueur, Leah and Anna Beshlian. "The History and Progress of Black Citizenship." Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race 16. 1 (2019): 267-277.

Wright Rigueur, Leah, Michelle Obama, Esi Edugyan, Sherrilyn Ifill, Sarah Ladipo Manyika, Tayari Jones, Jacqueline Woodson, and Michele L. Norris. "Beloved: On Toni Morrison’s Life and Legacy." Washington Post August 9, 2019: Op-E

Wright Rigueur, Leah. "Black Voters and the 2020 Presidential Election." ABC News Summit on 2020 Election. New York, New York. October 2019.

Wright Rigueur, Leah. "From the Great Society to the Politics of Polarization." Annual Meeting of the Organization of American Historians. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. April 2019.

Wright Rigueur, Leah. "Organized Crime in US Visual Culture." Black Portraitures Conference, New York, New York. October 2019.

Wright Rigueur, Leah. "Political Polarization, Tribalism, and Fact-Free Arguments." University of Connecticut Law Review Symposium, Hartford, Connecticut. October 2019.

Wright Rigueur, Leah. "Race and American Politics, Past and Present." Annual Town Hall and Public Affairs Meeting, McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies. Boston, Massachusetts. December 2019.

Wright Rigueur, Leah. "The Crisis of the Black Neo-Professional." Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, Charleston, South Carolina. October 2019.

Wright Rigueur, Leah. "The Crisis of the Black Professional." Workshop on Race, Capitalism, and History, National Project on Race and Capitalism, Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture, Atlixco, Mexico. June 2019.

Wright Rigueur, Leah. "The Politics of Racial Capitalism." Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C.. August 2019.

Wright Rigueur, Leah. "The Wars of Legitimacy: Social Movements and the 2016 Presidential Election." Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C.. August 2019.