Ethelene Whitmire

Ethelene Whitmire is a writer and professor, and the former chair of the Department of African American Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Ethelene is the author of The Remarkable Life of Reed Peggram (forthcoming February 2026) and Regina Anderson Andrews, Harlem Renaissance Librarian. Her research has won awards and funding from the Ford Foundation, the Fulbright Program, the Lois Roth Foundation, the American Scandinavian Foundation, and the American Library Association. She received her Bachelor’s and Master’s from Rutgers University – New Brunswick and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor. She was a former Librarian-in Residence at Yale University before becoming a professor at the University of California – Los Angeles, and her current institution, the University of Wisconsin - Madison. She’s published essays in the New York Times, Smithsonian Magazine, Narratively, and Longreads. She has been a fellow at artists’ residencies at Yaddo, Ucross, Hedgebrook, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Born in New Jersey, she now divides her time between Madison, Wisconsin and Copenhagen, Denmark.