Ava Purkiss

Ava Purkiss is an assistant professor in American Culture at the University of Michigan. She received her Ph.D. in history from the University of Texas at Austin and has held fellowships at the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies at the University of Virginia, the American Association of University Women, and the Mary M. Highes Research Fellowship in Texas History. Purkiss is the writer of Fit Citizens: A History of Black Women’s Exercise, 1900-1960, recipient of the 2017 Organization of American Historians Lerner-Scott Prize and the 2018 Letitia Woods Brown prize for best article in African American women’s history from the Association of Black Women Historians.