Her research and writing address public culture and history in West Africa and the African diaspora. She is the author of Routes of Remembrance: Refashioning the Slave Trade in Ghana (University of Chicago Press, 2008), which won the Amaury Talbot Prize and the Toyin Falola Africa book award. Currently, she is completing a second book entitled Tyrannies of Freedom: Race, Power, and the Fictions of Late Capitalism. Holsey received her PhD in Socio-Cultural Anthropology from Columbia University and previously taught in the Department of African and African American Studies at Duke University. She is the recipient of fellowships from the National Humanities Center, the Ford Foundation, and the National Science Foundation.