diff --git a/pandas/_libs/lib.pyx b/pandas/_libs/lib.pyx
index 4b423175172d2..e816bd4cd4026 100644
--- a/pandas/_libs/lib.pyx
+++ b/pandas/_libs/lib.pyx
@@ -1111,6 +1111,7 @@ _TYPE_MAP = {
     "complex128": "complex",
     "c": "complex",
     "string": "string",
+    str: "string",
     "S": "bytes",
     "U": "string",
     "bool": "boolean",
diff --git a/pandas/tests/dtypes/test_inference.py b/pandas/tests/dtypes/test_inference.py
index b3c6015475674..907991b97ead1 100644
--- a/pandas/tests/dtypes/test_inference.py
+++ b/pandas/tests/dtypes/test_inference.py
@@ -1267,9 +1267,9 @@ def test_interval(self):
     @pytest.mark.parametrize("klass", [pd.array, Series])
     @pytest.mark.parametrize("skipna", [True, False])
     @pytest.mark.parametrize("data", [["a", "b", "c"], ["a", "b", pd.NA]])
-    def test_string_dtype(self, data, skipna, klass):
+    def test_string_dtype(self, data, skipna, klass, nullable_string_dtype):
         # StringArray
-        val = klass(data, dtype="string")
+        val = klass(data, dtype=nullable_string_dtype)
         inferred = lib.infer_dtype(val, skipna=skipna)
         assert inferred == "string"