Dr. Fletcher is a historian of race, gender, and confinement in the American South. She holds a Ph.D. in History from Indiana University.

Before attending IU, Charlene led a domestic violence/sexual assault program and a significant reentry initiative in New York City, assisting women and men in their transition from incarceration to society, and served as a lecturer of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York. Charlene’s forthcoming book Confined Femininity: Race, Gender, and Incarceration in Kentucky, 1865-1920, explores the experiences of confined African American women in Kentucky from Reconstruction to the Progressive Era, explicitly illuminating the lives of confined Black women by examining places other than carceral locales as arenas of confinement, including mental health institutions and domestic spaces. Her work has been supported by the Kentucky Historical Society, the Filson Historical Society, the Gilder Lehrman Institute for American History, the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), and the Coordinating Council of Women Historians.

Charlene's second book project explores Italian migration and experiences in the Mississippi Delta between the Gilded Age and the mid-twentieth century. It interrogates the Italian padrone system as a form of confinement and relationships between Italians and African Americans because of shared proximity and experience in the rural Jim Crow South. In addition to her research, Dr. Fletcher is an active public scholar and serves as a Community Scholar at the IUPUI Center for Africana Studies and Culture. She also serves on the editorial boards of The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society and the Digital Encyclopedia of Indianapolis. She is an elected member of the Board of Directors of the National Council of Public History (NCPH).

To learn more about Charlene and her work, visit www.charlenejfletcher.com

Charlene Fletcher

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