Faculty

Devin Fergus
Assistant Professor of History

PhD, Columbia, 2002

History of the modern United States and African American experience; liberalism and nationalism; politics and society since 1945.

Telephone: 615-322-2600
Email: Devin.fergus@vanderbilt.edu
Office Hours: T 11:00-1:00 pm
Office: Benson Hall 112

Devin Fergus is an assistant professor of modern United States and African American history, with specializations in politics and society since 1945. He is author of Liberalism, Black Power, and the Making of American Politics, 1965-1980 (University of Georgia Press, 2008), which explores the interplay between liberalism and black nationalism from 1965 to 1980, and addresses the question of why the very policies of liberalism that moderated black power also energized the New Right.

Currently, Professor Fergus is completing The Ghetto Tax, 1974-2000,  which examines how America’s hidden taxes in higher auto insurance rates and high-interest payday, mortgage, and equity loans quarantine minority, urban, female, elderly, and poor populations.  These hidden charges have contributed to wealth inequalities since the 1970s. The Ghetto Tax explains why, despite closing income gaps between whites and minorities and women and men, for example, racial and gender wealth differentials have continue to widen in the U.S. over the last quarter century.

Professor Fergus has received numerous grants and fellowships from foundations such as Rockefeller, Gilder Lehrman, Du Pont, Ford, National Endowment for the Humanities/W.E.B. DuBois Institute, Mellon (Cambridge, UK), and Rothermere American Institute (Oxford, UK). 

Fergus has appeared on local, national, and international news networks, such as the Nashville Tennessean and National Public Radio.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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