Rashida Harrison

Rashida L. Harrison, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Social Relations and Policy at James Madison College. She earned her Ph.D. in African American and African Studies with disciplinary foci in sociology and literature at Michigan State University. Harrison earned her B.A. from Cornell University in Africana Studies with a minor in sociology. Professor Harrison’s teaching reflects her interest, and includes courses on social theory, social movements, intersections of Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality, Global Citizenships, and Race and Citizenship to name a few.

Harrison’s current research project on Black British Women’s Transnational Feminist Activism of the late 1970s-1980s is informed by her multi ethnic experiences with blackness. Born and raised in New York City's iconic South Bronx, Harrison engaged the politics of race, gender and consciousness at an early age. These formative experiences deepened her understanding of the African/Black Diaspora and inspired her early career research into how women build coalitions across social identities, political realities, and national borders.

Harrison’s research focus on transnational black and multiracial feminist social movements uses the Black British feminist movement as a case study to examine the impact of Western imperialism on black women’s nationality and immigration rights, reproductive justice and agency within public organizations. More specifically, she looks at grassroots periodicals produced during the movement, in order to understand how Black women instituted that agency and clarified for themselves and community their social standing in British Society.