Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities
United Kingdom
fellow
Kali Gross
2026-2027
Home institution
Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia
Country of origin (home institution)
United States
Discipline(s)
Colonial and postcolonial history; Demography; Humanities; Interdisciplinary Studies; Modern history; Others; Social Sciences; Sociology
Theme(s)
Contemporary violence & Justice; Gender, Family & Youth; Human Rights; Inequalities, inclusion & Social Innovation; Other; Post-colonialism
Fellowship dates
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Biography
Kali Nicole Gross is the National Endowment for the Humanities Professor of African American Studies at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. She is a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians (OAH). Her primary research explores Black women’s historical experiences in the U.S. criminal justice system, and her expertise and opinion pieces have been featured in press outlets such as TIME, The Washington Post, and BBC News. She has appeared on networks such as C-SPAN, MS Now (formerly MSNBC), and NPR.
She is the author of three award-winning books, and her latest monograph, Vengeance Feminism: The Power of Black Women’s Fury in Lawless Times (Seal Press 2024), won the 2025 PEN Open Book Award and the 2025 ASALH Book Prize. Her grants and fellowships include the Carnegie Fellowship, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture: Scholar-in-Residence Award, the Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship, and she was a Public Voices Fellow for The Op-Ed Project.
Research Project
The history of Black women and capital punishment in America
As a CRASSH Visiting Fellow, Kali will draft 'First to Burn: Black Women and the Long History of American Execution'. Her book seeks to unearth this neglected history, revealing how Black women were disproportionately subject to various forms of capital punishment and thus central to its evolution—from the stake to the electric chair to chemical injection. Surveying five centuries, her book will open with early cases like those of Mariah, an enslaved Black woman burned at the stake in 1681 for arson, and close with the 2001 execution of Wanda Jean Allen, a mentally challenged Black queer woman put to death in Oklahoma for murdering her partner. These histories uncover the disparate punishments meted out not only along raced and gendered lines but also across intersections of class and notions of deviance.
Research Interests:
Black women in America; American executions; Capital punishment