“It is exciting to see African-American women inserted in texts when I know they would not have been in the past,” she said.

But she noted that there is considerable room for further scholarship in African-American women’s studies.

Higginbotham expressed particular interest in the Caribbean influx in America.

“For the students of color at Harvard, most of them are of Caribbean descent and African descent,” she said, noting that African-American students are in the minority of black students here.

She called for uniting “global women of color” through scholarship.

“We need to meticulously explore patriarchy, color, capitalism, and racism in the perpetuation of sexual exploitation,” she added.

Darlene C. Hine, an American history professor at Michigan State University and a Radcliffe Fellow this year, also outlined the future of black women’s history scholarship, noting that the field should focus on inferiority and internationalism.

She also encouraged the publishing of more biographies and testimonies. “We simply do not have enough black women’s stories,” she said.

At the discussion, Dean of the Radcliffe Institute Drew Gilpin Faust announced the Schlesinger Library’s acquisition of the papers of June Jordan, an African-American writer and activist who died last year.

“This is a major addition to our collection and to the record of the experience of women in America,” she said.

The papers were acquired with the help of the W.E.B. DuBois Institute for African American Research and include Jordan’s correspondences with well-known writers like Adrienne Rich and Alice Walker.