She is the recipient of national fellowships through the Ford Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, a Thurgood Marshall Fellowship at Dartmouth College and an Erskine A. Peters Fellowship at Notre Dame. Her book manuscript, "Prematurely Knowing: Black Girlhood in the 19th Century," examines the image of the black girl in the early black press, 19th-century novels, advice columns and black conduct books.