Originally from Plainfield, New Jersey, Sally McKee was trained as a medievalist at the Centre for Medieval Studies, University at Toronto. Her area of research lay in the Mediterranean, in particular, in the Venetian colony of Crete. She has published several articles on domestic slavery in Italy and the eastern Mediterranean, but now has shifted her focus to the second half of the nineteenth century.
Her 2017 book, The Exile's Song: Edmond Dédé and the Unfinished Revolutions of the Atlantic World (Yale), recovers the life and working world of the little-known composer and musician, Edmond Dédé (1827-1901), a free African-American born in antebellum New Orleans who spent nearly four decades in France. She has embarked on a new project that centers on the varied responses of black and white American artists, intellectuals, and collectors to European modernist movements. She is also working on a memoir about food and the single life.
Sally has led a peripatetic life. After graduating high school in 1973, she headed west and spent seven years in northern California. She received her B.A. from San Francisco State University in 1981. Thereafter, she spent a year and a half in Cambridge, Mass, nine years in Toronto, Canada, one and a half years in Washington, D.C. at Dumbarton Oaks, two years at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, five years in Tempe at Arizona State University, and fourteen years in Sacramento. She now lives in Davis, where she has taught at the university since 2000. From 1989 until 2005, she spent time each year working in the State Archives of Venice. Now, the archives and libraries of New Orleans, Washington, D.C., Paris, and Bordeaux have become her working ground.
When not teaching, she spends as much time as she can afford in the UK, France, Italy, and Spain. As much as she adores the 19th century, she misses the Latin.
Her 2017 book, The Exile's Song: Edmond Dédé and the Unfinished Revolutions of the Atlantic World (Yale), recovers the life and working world of the little-known composer and musician, Edmond Dédé (1827-1901), a free African-American born in antebellum New Orleans who spent nearly four decades in France. She has embarked on a new project that centers on the varied responses of black and white American artists, intellectuals, and collectors to European modernist movements. She is also working on a memoir about food and the single life.
Sally has led a peripatetic life. After graduating high school in 1973, she headed west and spent seven years in northern California. She received her B.A. from San Francisco State University in 1981. Thereafter, she spent a year and a half in Cambridge, Mass, nine years in Toronto, Canada, one and a half years in Washington, D.C. at Dumbarton Oaks, two years at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, five years in Tempe at Arizona State University, and fourteen years in Sacramento. She now lives in Davis, where she has taught at the university since 2000. From 1989 until 2005, she spent time each year working in the State Archives of Venice. Now, the archives and libraries of New Orleans, Washington, D.C., Paris, and Bordeaux have become her working ground.
When not teaching, she spends as much time as she can afford in the UK, France, Italy, and Spain. As much as she adores the 19th century, she misses the Latin.