Marcia Chatelain
Chatelain in 2017
Born	1979 (age 46–47) Chicago, Illinois
Awards	Pulitzer Prize for History (2021)
Academic background
Education	University of Missouri Brown University
Doctoral advisor	Mari Jo Buhle
Academic work
Discipline	History,African American Studies
Institutions	University of PennsylvaniaGeorgetown University

Marcia Chatelain (born 1979) is an American academic who serves as the Penn Presidential Compact Professor of Africana Studies at theUniversity of Pennsylvania. In 2021, she was awarded thePulitzer Prize for History for her bookFranchise: The Golden Arches in Black America (2020), for which she also won theJames Beard Award for Writing in 2022. Chatelain was the first black woman to win the latter award.^[1][2]

She is also the creator of theFerguson Syllabus social media campaign and the author ofSouth Side Girls: Growing Up in the Great Migration (2015).

Chatelain was born in 1979 inChicago,Illinois. Raised in Chicago, she attendedSt. Ignatius College Prep.^[3][4]

She graduated from theUniversity of Missouri in 2001, with degrees injournalism andreligious studies. She then worked as a Resident Scholar at the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation.^[5] Chatelain received her A.M. and Ph.D. in American Civilization fromBrown University, graduating in 2008, and was awarded theUniversity of California, Santa Barbara's Black Studies Dissertation Fellowship.^[6][5] Chatelain worked as the Reach for Excellence Assistant Professor of Honors and African American Studies at theUniversity of Oklahoma's Honors College, before becoming a Provost's Distinguished Associate Professor of History and African American Studies atGeorgetown University.^[5]

In 2014, following thekilling of Michael Brown inFerguson, Missouri, Chatelain mobilized other scholars onTwitter to talk about what was happening in Ferguson with their students and contribute to a crowdsourced reading list. The result became known as the #FergusonSyllabus. Its success has led to other crowdsourced syllabi to respond to national tragedies.^[7][8] In 2016,The Chronicle of Higher Education named Chatelain a Top Influencer in academics, in recognition of the success of #FergusonSyllabus.^[6][5]

In 2017, Chatelain contributed to theUndisclosed podcast as a resident historian.^[5] As of August 2020^[update], she hosted theSlate podcastThe Waves on feminism, gender, and popular culture.^[9]

Chatelain has published two books:South Side Girls: Growing Up in the Great Migration (Duke University Press, 2015), about the history of Chicago'sGreat Migration through the lens of black girls^[10] andFranchise: The Golden Arches in Black America (Liveright/W. W. Norton, 2020) about the history of the relationship betweencivil rights and thefast food industry.^[3][11]

Chatelain has received awards from theFord Foundation, theAmerican Association of University Women, and theGerman Marshall Fund of the United States.^[5] She has won teaching awards atGeorgetown University, where she serves on the Working Group on Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation.^[9] In 2019, Chatelain was named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow. She also served as an Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fellow at theNew America Foundation.^[9]

In 2023, Chatelain was nominated to theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences.^[12]

Chatelain is a 2025Guggenheim Fellow.^[13]

Chatelain isCatholic.^[14]

In 2021, Chatelain was awarded thePulitzer Prize for History for her bookFranchise: The Golden Arches in Black America.^[15] For her work onFranchise, Chatelain also received the 2022James Beard Foundation Award, the 2021Hagley Prize in Business History, the 2021Organization of American Historians'Lawrence W. Levine Award, the 2021Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Nonfiction, the 2019–2021Business History Review's Alfred and Fay Chandler Book Award, and the 2020 Hooks National Book Award.^{[16][17][18][19][20][21]}

• —— (2015).South Side Girls: Growing Up in the Great Migration.Duke University Press.ISBN 9780822358541.
• —— (2020).Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America. Liveright/W. W. Norton.ISBN 9781631498701.

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• 1979 births
• Living people
• 21st-century African-American academics
• 21st-century American academics
• 21st-century African-American women writers
• 21st-century American women writers
• 21st-century African-American writers
• 21st-century American historians
• 21st-century American non-fiction writers
• 21st-century Roman Catholics
• African-American Catholics
• African-American historians
• African-American non-fiction writers
• American Roman Catholic writers
• American women historians
• Brown University alumni
• Catholics from Illinois
• Georgetown University faculty
• Historians of African Americans
• Historians from Chicago
• Pulitzer Prize for History winners
• University of Missouri alumni
• Writers from Chicago

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