Gretchen Gerzina

{{Short description|American historian (born 1950)}}

{{Infobox person

| name =

| birth_name =

| birth_date = {{Birth year and age|1950}}

| birth_place = Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.

| other_names = Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina

| alma_mater =

| occupation = Historian, author, academic

| spouse = Anthony Gerzina

| children = 2

| notable_works = Black England: Life Before Emancipation

| website = {{website|https://gretchengerzina.com}}

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}}

Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina (born 1950) is an American author and academic who has written mostly historically-grounded biographical studies. She has written about Black British history.{{cite book | last=Sudan | first=R. | title=Fair Exotics: Xenophobic Subjects in English Literature, 172-185 | publisher=University of Pennsylvania Press, Incorporated | series=New Cultural Studies | year=2013 | isbn=978-0-8122-0376-9 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XNc-3SB0sBwC&pg=PA104 | access-date=2024-06-21 | page=104}}{{cite web |title=Private Passions: Gretchen Gerzina |url=https://www.bbc.com/mediacentre/proginfo/2020/40/private-passions |publisher=BBC Media Centre |access-date=21 June 2024 |date=4 October 2020}} Her academic posts have included being the Kathe Tappe Vernon Professor of Biography at Dartmouth College, working as a professor at Vassar College, being a professor and a director of Africana Studies at Barnard College, and as of April 2019 being the Dean of the University of Massachusetts Amherst Commonwealth Honors College.{{cite web|url=https://www.honors.umass.edu/dean-gretchen-holbrook-gerzina|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190328120504/https://www.honors.umass.edu/dean-gretchen-holbrook-gerzina|publisher=University of Massachusetts Amherst|work=Commonwealth Honors College|title=About Us {{!}} Dean Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina|archive-date=March 28, 2019}} Gerzina was the host of WAMC's nationally-syndicated radio program The Book Show for fourteen years, where she interviewed authors.{{cite web|url=https://gretchengerzina.com/about-gretchen-gerzina.html|website=gretchengerzina.com|title=About Gretchen Gerzina|access-date=June 12, 2023}}

In the UK, she presented a 10-part documentary for BBC Radio 4 called Britain's Black Past,{{cite web|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07yvszg|work=BBC Radio 4|title=Britain's Black Britain|date=October 2016|access-date=June 12, 2023}} which she subsequently adapted into a book.{{cite book|first=Gretchen|last=Gerzina|title=Britain's Black Past|publisher=Liverpool University Press|date=March 11, 2020|isbn=978-1789621600}}{{cite journal |last1=Adi |first1=Hakim |title=Reviewed Work: Britain's Black Past by Gretchen H. Gerzina |journal=New West Indian Guide |date=2022 |volume=96 |issue=1/2 |pages=183–184 |doi=10.1163/22134360-09601002 |jstor=27130500 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/27130500 |access-date=21 June 2024|doi-access=free }}