KEYNOTE SPEAKER

Robin D. G. Kelley is Distinguished Professor and Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History at UCLA. 

 

His career spans several esteemed universities, including serving as a Professor of History and Africana at New York University as well as acting as Chairman of NYU’s History Department. While at NYU, Kelley was one of the youngest full professors in the country at 32 years of age. He was also the William B. Ransford Professor of Cultural and Historical Studies at Columbia and helped to shape programs at its Institute for Research in African American Studies.

 

Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he is the recipient of many awards and fellowships, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Freedom Scholar Award. His books include the prize-winning Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (Free Press, 2009); Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (Beacon Press, 2002, new ed. 2022); Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression (University of North Carolina Press, 1990, new ed. 2015); Yo’ Mama’s Disfunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America (Beacon Press, 1997); and Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class  (Free Press, 1994).

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Robin D. G. Kelley is Distinguished Professor and Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History at UCLA.  Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he is the recipient of many awards and fellowships, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Freedom Scholar Award.  His books include the prize-winning Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (Free Press, 2009); Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (Beacon Press, 2002, new ed. 2022); Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression (University of North Carolina Press, 1990, new ed. 2015); Yo’ Mama’s Disfunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America (Beacon Press, 1997); and Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class  (Free Press, 1994).

 

His essays have appeared in dozens of publications, including The Nation, New York Times, New Yorker, New York Review of Books, Hammer and Hope, Black Scholar, Dissent, Counterpunch, African Studies Review, Journal of American History, Journal of Palestine Studies, New Labor Forum, and The Boston Review, for which he also serves as Contributing Editor. 

 

Kelley hosted the critically acclaimed podcast, Erroll Garner Uncovered, and has written liner notes for recordings by jazz legends and rising stars, including Thelonious Monk, Erroll Garner, Chick Corea, Randy Weston, Eric Dolphy, Jimmy Owens, Gil Scott-Heron, James Brandon Lewis, and Aja Monet.  

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