Rate My Professor Celeste Day Moore

Celeste Day Moore is an Associate Professor of History at Hamilton College, having joined the faculty in 2014 as a Visiting Assistant Professor, promoted to Assistant Professor in 2016, and to Associate Professor in 2022. A graduate of Haverford College with a B.A. with honors in History (2003), she received her A.M. (2007) and Ph.D. with distinction in U.S. History (2014) from the University of Chicago. Her research specializes in African-American culture, media, and Black internationalism in the twentieth century. Moore's acclaimed first book, Soundscapes of Liberation: African American Music in Postwar France (Duke University Press, 2021), explores how African American music shaped postwar French culture amid decolonization, imperialism, and global liberation struggles. The monograph garnered major awards, including the 2023 Woody Guthrie First Book Award from the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM-US), the 2022 Gilbert Chinard Prize from the Society for French Historical Studies, and the 2022 Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) Award for Excellence in Historical Research on Recorded Jazz.

Her peer-reviewed articles include “Ray Charles in Paris: Race, Protest, and the Soundscape of the Algerian War” in American Quarterly (2019) and “Producing a ‘Black World’: Black Journal and the Creation of a New Medium of Black Internationalism, 1968–1970” in the Journal of African American History (2021). Moore has contributed chapters to volumes such as William Greaves: An American Odyssey (Columbia University Press, 2021) and New Perspectives on the Black Intellectual Tradition (Northwestern University Press, 2018). She held prestigious fellowships at the Institut d’Études Politiques (Sciences Po) in Paris (2011-2012) and the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies at the University of Virginia (2012-2014). Additional honors include a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend (2019), Hamilton College’s Class of 1966 Career Development Award (2016), and recent faculty grants. Moore teaches courses like African-American History, Paris Noir: Twentieth-Century Black Internationalism, and Race and Capitalism. She has presented invited lectures at Harvard, Duke, and European universities and is a member of the African American Intellectual History Society and Organization of American Historians. Currently on leave for the 2025-2026 academic year with the Hamilton in France Program.