Angel Adams Parham

Angel Adams Parham is Associate Professor of Sociology and senior fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. Her research is in the area of historical sociology, engaging in inquiry that examines the past in order to better understand how to live well in the present and envision wisely for the future. She is the author of American Routes: Racial Palimpsests and the Transformation of Race (Oxford, 2017) which won several awards. She also does research and writing at the intersection of the Black intellectual tradition and the classics. As part of this work, she authored The Black Intellectual Tradition: Reading Freedom in Classical Literature (Classical Academic Press, 2022, co-authored with Anika Prather), and founded Nyansa Classical Community, a non-profit which creates classical curricula and programming designed to connect with students from diverse backgrounds. Parham has published articles on the intersection of Black writers and the classics in popular outlets including the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Public Discourse, and Comment Magazine, and Common Good Magazine. Parham has been a member of the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, as well as the recipient of a Fulbright grant. She received her bachelor’s degree from Yale University and completed her doctoral work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.