91´«Ã½

Brenda Mitchell-Powell received a 2008 Spectrum Doctoral Fellowship and is pursuing her degree at Simmons College. She holds a M.S. in Library and Information Science from Simmons College and a B.A., with distinction, awarded in English from Simmons College.

Her proposed doctoral research will investigate the impact of libraries on the lives of nineteenth-century free people of color. Brenda hopes her research will expand the breadth and depth of interdisciplinary course options in graduate and undergraduate communications and history, as well as in Black studies, and will introduce an innovative approach to historical research on libraries. Such doctoral research will also benefit the profession by providing alternatives to existing pedagogy and historiography.