Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts

Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts has published widely on African-American history, politics and culture. Her book Harlem Is Nowhere, was a New York Times Notable Book of 2011, a National Book Critics Circle Finalist and cited by BOOKFORUM as the “Best New York Book” written in the twenty years since the magazine’s founding. Her 2015 book for young readers “Jake Makes a World: Jacob Lawrence a Young Artist in Harlem” (commissioned by MoMA and illustrated by Christopher Myers) was named by Booklist among the year’s top books about art for children. Rhodes-Pitts organizes collaborative public projects through The Freedwomen’s Bureau.

At Pratt she is an Assistant Professor of Writing and serves as Coordinator for the Black Studies Minor

BA, 2000, Afro-American Studies & Visual and Environmental Studies, Harvard College

Harlem Is Nowhere: A Journey to the Mecca of Black America, 2011, https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/sharifa-rhodes-pitts/harlem-is-nowhere/9780316040334/
Jake Makes A World: Jacob Lawrence, A Young Artist in Harlem, 2015,
https://store.moma.org/products/jake-makes-a-world-jacob-lawrence-a-young-artist-in-harlem-hardcover
Freed but Not Free, 2014, Creative Time Reports, https://creativetimereports.org/2014/09/17/sharifa-rhodes-pitts-freed-but-not-free-black-radical-brooklyn/
The Worth of Black Men, From Slavery to Ferguson, 2014, New York Times Magazine https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/12/magazine/the-worth-of-black-men-from-slavery-to-ferguson.html
Simone Leigh: For Her Own Pleasure and Edification, 2018, The Guggenheim Museum, https://www.guggenheim.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/guggenheim-sharifa-rhodes-pitt-essay-simone-leigh-hugo-boss-prize-2018.pdf
The Music of the Spheres, 2019, e-flux https://www.e-flux.com/journal/105/302721/the-music-of-the-spheres/
How a Harlem Skyrise got Hijacked, and Forgotten, 2021, The Nation, https://www.thenation.com/article/society/harlem-is201-june-jordan/