Dr. Sowande’ Mustakeem was born in Pittsburgh, PA and raised in Atlanta, GA. She went to Elon University in Burlington, North Carolina where she became the first person to graduate with a degree in African American Studies in 2000. She went afterwards on to The Ohio State University obtaining a Master’s degree in African & African American Studies in 2002. Thereafter, she went to Michigan State University, obtaining a PhD in the History Department’s ‘Comparative Black History Program’ in 2008.
Dr. Mustakeem has published a multitude of articles & essays related to her wide array of interests including race, gender, terror, violence, medicine and healing, illness, criminality, pop culture and public memory. Her most recent contribution appeared in the online publication Vox, “6 Myths About the History of Black People in America”. She has been featured on BBC radio, and was likewise on Henry Louis Gates’ PBS documentary series “Many Rivers to Cross.” Additionally in the spring of 2017 she became the first African American ever tenured through the tenure track process in the History department at Washington University in STL.
Dr. Mustakeem is globally known for her two time award winning book, Slavery at Sea: Terror, Sex, and Sickness in the Middle Passage published 2016 through University of Illinois Press; (winner of the 2017 Wesley Logan prize for the best book for the history of the African Diaspora jointly awarded by the the American Historical Association and the Association for the Study of African American Llife and History. And the 2020 Dred Scott Freedom Award for the Historical Literacy Excellence from the Dred Scott Heritage Foundation.)
Currently, Dr. Mustakeem is working on her next book focused on women and crime.