About

Dr. Alcenat is an historian, educator & academic consultant. He holds a joint appointment as Assistant Professor of History at Scripps College, and a consortium-wide position as assistant professor in Africana Studies at the Claremont Colleges in southern California where he teaches courses on nineteenth century United States, Atlantic, and Afro-Caribbean history.

His working manuscript, “Children of Africa, Shall Be Haytians,” explores the radical ideologies of African-American settlers who emigrated to Haiti before the U.S. Civil War. An experienced educator, he has taught courses on topics like “Black Women’s Political History,” “Birthright Citizenship,” “The American Radical Tradition,” and “Racism and Antisemitism.” He has also served as an Academic Director for the Great Books Summer Program at Stanford University, as well as Amherst and Haverford Colleges. Wes has held a range of fellowships from various institutions, including the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University. He has held visiting scholar positions at MIT, Harvard and Princeton, among others. Outside the academy, he is a contributor to publications like The Nation, Jacobin and the Black Perspectives blog of the African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS).

Originally from Haiti, Wes grew up in Minnesota and is a proud product of Minneapolis Public Schools. These days, he splits his time between Brooklyn and Claremont, California, where he’s an assistant professor of History and Africana Studies at the Claremont Colleges. When he’s not teaching or researching, you might find Wes reminiscing about his late pet rabbit of 12 years, B.B. King (R.I.P), checking out the latest art exhibit (he’s an accidental art enthusiast!), amateur gardening with houseplants (he’s trying), catching free jazz shows, enjoying off-off Broadway theater, taking dance classes with his daughter, or reading novels – especially NYRB classics, his guilty pleasure.