Malaurie Pilatte holds a PhD in History from Johns Hopkins University. Her research focuses on the history of the United States (19th and 20th centuries), women's and gender history, and the history of ideas. Her dissertation is entitled “Amour Noir: France, Love, and the Making of the Modern Black American Woman, 1884-1925.” In it, she showed that the love of France was a central idea developed by educated Black women in the U.S. in the age of Jim Crow. Amour Noir shows how African American women intellectuals, activists and artists used their connections to France and Frenchness to promote gender and racial equality at home and abroad at the turn of the 20th century. You can read one of her publications on "Black Perspectives," the blog of the African American Intellectual History Association. In 2025-2026, Malaurie will be a postdoctoral fellow at the Johns Hopkins University Writing Program. Malaurie was born and raised in France. She is a graduate of the Agrégation d'anglais and attended the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon.