Jessica Milward is the Associate Director of the Center for Liberation, Anti-Racism and Belonging (C-LAB) at UC Irvine. An Associate Professor in the Department of History and Core Faculty member of African American Studies, Millward is particularly interested in the intersections of slavery, freedom, power and liberation. Dr. Millward's first book, Finding Charity’s Folk: Enslaved and Free Black women in Maryland was published as part of the Race in the Atlantic World series, Athens: University of Georgia Press (2015). An award-winning scholar, she has published in the Journal of African American History, the Journal of Women’s History, Frontiers, Nommo, Souls and the Women’s History Review as well as Op-eds in Chronicle of Higher Education, The Feministwire.com and The Conversation.com. With Aisha Finch and Tiffany Willoughby-Herard, Millward co-edited a special issue of Palimpsest on “Black Feminist Theory and the Politics of Care.” Millward is also co-editor with Kacey Calahane and Max Speare, Historians on Housewives: Fashion, Power, and Historical Memory on Bravo Reality Television Historians on Housewives: Fashion, Power, and Historical Memory on Bravo Reality Television (UNC Press, 2025).
Dr. Millward is currently working on two solo authored book length projects. The first discusses African American women's experiences with sexual assault and intimate partner violence from Reconstruction to the Jazz Age. The second books look at historical memory, Ghana, and the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
