Erin Royston Battat received her Ph.D. in the History of American Civilization (American Studies) from Harvard University in 2008. She was a fellow at the Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research in 2009, and her research has also been supported by the Association of American University Women. Her first book, Ain’t Got No Home: America's Great Migrations and the Making of an Interracial Left (UNC, forthcoming spring 2014), examines how writers, artists, and activists used stories of migration and itinerancy to fight for economic and racial justice amidst the capitalist collapse of the 1930s. She is working on a second project that uncovers how African American women continued to create radical art and literature during the repressive Cold War era. Battat has published essays on Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and on the intersections of sociology and literature. She teaches in Harvard’s History & Literature program and at Wellesley College, and has taught American Studies at Penn State Harrisburg as well. Her teaching and research interests include African American and ethnic literature, proletarian literature, 1930s literature and culture, migration and immigration, social movements, women and gender studies, and labor history. When she's not in the library or a classroom, she enjoy the outdoors and playing with her two children and the family dog, Guinness.

Check out Erin's new book, Ain't Got No Home: America's Great Migrations and the Making of an Interracial Left: http://uncpress.unc.edu/books/T-9022.html