Penny Marie Von Eschen is an American historian and Professor of History and William R. Kenan, Jr.
Von Eschen graduated from Northwestern University with a bachelor's degree in philosophy in 1982.
She completed a Ph.D. from the department of history at Columbia University in 1994;[2] her dissertation was African-Americans and colonialism, 1937–1957: The rise and fall of the politics of the African diaspora.
[2] Von Eschen's book on trumpeter Louis Armstrong and the Jazz ambassadors program of the United States Department of State, Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War (2004)[4] was first runner-up for the John Hope Franklin Publication Prize for the Best Book in American Studies in 2005.
[6] She also wrote Race against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937–1957 (1997).