Micki McElya
American author and historian
Micki Paige McElya (born 1972) is an American author and historian. She is a professor of History at the University of Connecticut. In 2017, her book The Politics of Mourning: Death and Honor in Arlington National Cemetery was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.
Early life and education
McElya received her Bachelor of Arts degree in history from Bryn Mawr College and her Ph.D. from New York University in 2003.
Career
Upon graduating from New York University, McElya was hired as an assistant professor of American Studies at the University of Alabama. During her tenure, she published a book titled Clinging to Mammy: The Faithful Slave in Twentieth-Century America through the Harvard University Press. The book focused on how the de-sexualization and infantilization of African American women during slavery helped reiterate the black maternal iconography and slavery apologia. Clinging to Mammy also earned her a place on the 2007 Myers Center Outstanding Book Awards Advancing Human Rights.
McElya eventually left the University of Alabama in 2008 to accept a position as an associate professor of History at the University of Connecticut. She published her second book titled The Politics of Mourning: Death and Honor in Arlington National Cemetery through the Harvard University Press, which earned her a Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction nomination.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Micki McElya” as american author and historian. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as american author and historian. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q87084360. VIAF identifies the subject as 55343956. The Library of Congress control number is n2007003149. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1972, 2017, 2003 and 2007.
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This entry incorporates text from “Micki McElya” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.