Professor Day

Professor Day is an associate professor, who has been a member of the Brooklyn College faculty since 1992. She served as Chairperson from 2003 to 2006.  Professor Day received her Ph.D. from the History Department at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Wisconsin. She  received her B.A. degree from Howard University in Comparative History and French. Before coming to Brooklyn College, she was an Assistant Professor at William Paterson University in New Jersey. She was awarded a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship in 1999 to teach and conduct research at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi, Ghana.

Professor Day‘s specialty is African History with a concentration on women in the pre-colonial political systems of Sierra Leone and Ghana. She has written several articles in this area including,  ‘‘What's Tourism Got to Do With It?: The Yaa Asantewa Legacy and Development in Asanteman" Africa Today (Fall 2004) and “Long Live the Queen: the Yaa Asantewa Centenary Celebrations and the Politics of History,” published in Ghana Studies Journal  (Fall 2001) and Jenda, 1:2 (Fall 2001), an electronic journal dedicated to scholarship about African women. Her article, “The Evolution of Female Chiefship During the Late Nineteenth Century Wars of the Mende,” International Journal of African Historical Studies  27:3  (Fall 1994), is widely used by scholars of both Sierra Leone and African women’s history.  She has a sub-specialty in the history of African Americans on Long Island and is the author of several articles on this subject as well as a book entitled, Making a Way to Freedom: A History of African Americans on Long Island published in 1997. 

Professor Day teaches the African history survey as well as the graduate course in African history, “The Social History of Africa 1790-1945.” She taught "United States History" and "History of the African Diaspora" at KNUST.

She has twice conducted summer seminar abroad study/tours to Ghana for CUNY students.  These are designed as introductions to Ghanaian culture and history as well as an exploration of African diasporic identity and culture.  The twenty four students who have made the trip describe it as a “once in a lifetime” experience.

Click here to view pictures from Prof. Day's research trip to Sierra Leone.

Contact Prof. Day at lday@brooklyn.cuny.edu