2024 Victorian Society of New York Book Award Winner
2025 Brooklyn Book Prize Longlist (Non-Fiction)
2025 Gotham Book Prize Finalist
Brooklynites: the Remarkable Story of the Free Black Communities that Shaped a Borough
This is a story of land, home, labor, of New Yorkers past, and the legacy they left us. This is the story of Brooklyn.
ABOUT
Prithi Kanakamedala
Prithi Kanakamedala is Professor of History at Bronx Community College and The Graduate Center CUNY.
Her first full-length book Brooklynites: the Remarkable Story of the Free Black Communities that Shaped a Borough (NYU Press) was a finalist for the 2025 Gotham Book Prize, long-listed for the 2025 Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize (nonfiction), and won the 2024 Victorian Society of New York Book Award.
An active public historian for just under two decades, Prithi continues to serve as a historical consultant to artists, curators, and cultural organizations across New York City, and is a proud board member of Weeksville Heritage Center, and the Center for Brooklyn History part of Brooklyn Public Library. She is originally from Liverpool, England.
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Select Media & Public Lectures
I’ve commented on the history of slavery, nineteenth-century New York, and Brooklyn and New York’s pre-Civil War free Black communities for a variety of media outlets.
Public Program for Center for Brooklyn History, Brooklyn Public Library, March 2022
Public Program for Adams Street branch, Brooklyn Public Library, February 2021
Segment by Vanessa Murdock for CBS New York, February 2021
Segment by Aundrea Cline-Thomas for CBS News New York, February 2020
Public Program with Julie Golia, NYPL, Doc Chat, New York Public Library, September 2020
W-NET/ THIRTEEN/ PBS Web Series to accompany The Woman in the Iron Coffin (Secrets of the Dead), November 2018
Interview with Julie Golia and Zaheer Ali for Flatbush + Main, a podcast for Brooklyn Historical Society, February 2018
“1 in 4 Brooklynites was a slave,”
Interview by Matt Wells for
BBC World Service, May 2015
by Alexander Nazaryan, Newsweek, April 2015
Video Public Program with
Dr. Carla Peterson,
Brooklyn Historical Society,
C-SPAN January 2014
Teaching
Prithi Kanakamedala is Professor of History at Bronx Community College of the City University of New York, where she teaches undergraduate courses in U.S. History, African-American History, and the History of New York City with a focus on material culture, archives, and the public humanities.
At the CUNY Graduate Center, Prithi is a faculty member of the Master’s in Liberal Studies Program (New York Studies, and Public Scholarship concentrations), and the Black, Race, and Ethnic Studies Program. She also serves faculty co-ordinator of PS2 (the Public Scholarship Practice Space) housed at CUNY Center for the Humanities, and coordinator of the Public Scholarship Certificate Program.
contact
Dr. Prithi Kanakamedala
Professor, Department of History
Bronx Community College of the City University of New York
2155 University Ave, Bronx, NY 10453
(e) prathibha [dot] kanakamedala [at] bcc [dot] cuny [dot] edu
Photo Credits: © Brooklyn Abolitionists (Pure + Applied), Weeksville/ Vera List (Rathkopf Photography), Profile Photo (Samantha Seneviratne), Teaching (Monica Fernandez)
Prithi Kanakamedala 