Dylan C. Penningroth specializes in African American history and in U.S. socio-legal history. His first book, The Claims of Kinfolk: African American Property and Community in the Nineteenth-Century South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), won the Avery Craven Prize from the Organization of American Historians. His articles have appeared in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the Journal of American History, the American Historical Review, and the Journal of Family History. Penningroth has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, the Stanford Humanities Center, and the MacArthur Foundation.
Before joining UC Berkeley in 2015, he was on the faculty of the History Department at the University of Virginia (1999-2002), at Northwestern University (2002-2015), and a Research Professor at the American Bar Foundation (2007-2015).
Penningroth’s new book is entitled Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Civil Rights (Liveright, 2023). Interweaving his own family history with long-forgotten documents found in county courthouse basements, the book explores how ordinary Black people used and thought about law in their everyday lives, and how Black legal activity and Black legal thought helped shape American law and Black social movements from the 1830s to the 1970s. In a world that denied their constitutional rights, Black people built lives for themselves through what he calls “rights of everyday use.” The book tries to recover a rich vision of Black life―a vision allied with, yet distinct from, the freedom struggle. Before the Movement was awarded eleven book prizes and was shortlisted for four more.
At Berkeley, Penningroth teaches classes on African American history and on U.S. legal history. He has had the privilege of advising brilliant PhD students in both the History Department and the Program of Jurisprudence and Social Policy (JSP), on a broad range of topics.
For office hours, see Jurisprudence & Social Policy / Legal Studies.
For more information, see Penningroth’s personal website.
Education
B.A., Yale University (1993)
Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University (2000)
Dylan C Penningroth is teaching the following course in Spring 2025:
• 375P sec. 001 - Teaching Learning in Higher Education
Courses During Other Semesters
| Semester | Course Num | Course Title |  Teaching Evaluations | Fall 2024 | 209 sec. 001 | JSP Orientation Seminar | View Teaching Evaluation | Spring 2024 | 375P sec. 001 | Teaching Learning in Higher Education | View Teaching Evaluation |
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