Nina Mjagkij is author of the award-winning Light in the Darkness: African Americans and the YMCA, 1852-1946 as well as numerous articles on race, gender, and film. She is co-editor of Men and Women Adrift: The YMCA and YWCA in the City and editor of Organizing Black America: An Encyclopedia of African American Associations as well as Portraits in African American Life since 1865. Mjagkij was appointed to serve a four-year term on the editorial board of the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. She continues to serves as co-editor of Rowman & Littlefield’s African American History Series, as well as Director of Ball State's African-American Studies Program. Mjagkij won the 1994 Hurley Goodall Distinguished Faculty Award and Ball State's 1995 Outstanding Junior Faculty Award.