Author, historian, and professor Erica Armstrong Dunbar is the definition of a Renaissance woman. She is a respected authority in the world of academia and, as a scholar of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, has also parlayed her knowledge on the subject into an executive producer role on one of HBO Max’s newest series — The Gilded Age.

With the Rutgers University professor’s guidance, the breakout show has given viewers a unique perspective of African American society preceding the turn of the nineteenth century.

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The author of Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge, is no stranger to telling stories rooted in history. In addition to her novel detailing the nation’s first family’s long-held secret of enslavement, Dunbar has also profiled Harriet Tubman in novel-form and released A Fragile Freedom, chronicling the lives of African American women in the urban north during the early years of the republic.

Dunbar has a Master of Arts and a Ph.D. from Columbia University.