Curriculum Vitae
Robin D. G. Kelley, Ph.D.
Department of History
University of California at Los Angeles
6265 Bunche Hall
Box 95147
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1473
(310) 825-4601
rdkelley@history.ucla.edu
EDUCATION
University of California, Los Angeles, 1987, Ph.D., United States History
University of California, Los Angeles, 1985, M.A. African History
California State University, Long Beach, 1983, B.A. History
EMPLOYMENT
Gary B. Nash Professor of American History, University of California at Los Angeles, 2011 –
Present
Interim Chair, Afro-American Studies Interdepartmental Program, UCLA, 2014-
Professor of History and American Studies, University of Southern California, 2006- 2011
Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Professor of American History, The Queen’s College, Oxford
University, 2009-2010
Associate Director, Center for Diversity and Democracy, Fall 2008 - Present
William B. Ransford Professor of Cultural and Historical Studies, Columbia University, 2005-
2007
Distinguished Visiting Scholar, Department of African and African-American Studies, Harvard
University, Fall 2005.
Acting Director, Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, Columbia University, 2005-06
Visiting Scholar, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Spring 2005 [Taught seminar on Thelonious Monk]
Professor of Anthropology and African American Studies, Columbia University, 2003-2007
Chairperson, History Department, New York University, 2002-2003.
Visiting Professor, Center for Jazz Studies [Louis Armstrong Chair], Columbia University,
2001-2002
Visiting Professor, African American Studies, Columbia University, Spring 1997
Professor of History and Africana Studies, New York University, 1994-2003
Professor of History, African-American Studies, and American Culture, University of
Michigan, 1994
Associate Professor of History and Afro-American Studies, University of Michigan, 1990-1994
Assistant Professor of History and African-American Studies, Emory University, 1988-1990
Visiting Lecturer, History, Southeastern Massachusetts University, 1987-1988
GRANTS, FELLOWSHIPS, AND AWARDS
Guggenheim Fellowship, 2014 – 2015
Distinguished Visiting Lecturer, Universita' degli Studi di Cagliari, Italy, June - July 2013
Best Book About Jazz 2009, Jazz Journalists Association
Music in American Culture Award, American Musicological Association
Ambassador Award for Book of Special Distinction, English Speaking Union;
PEN Open Book Award, PEN American Center
Finalist, 2010 PEN USA Literary Award
ASCAP Deems-Taylor Award
Best Non-Fiction Book, Hurston/Wright Legacy Award.
Distinguished Visiting Scholar, Washington University in St. Louis, March 2007.
Nominated—Jazz Journalist Association Award, 2005
Distinguished Alumni, California State University at Long Beach, 2003
Delivered the Nathan Huggins Lectures, Harvard University, Fall 2003.
Montgomery Fellow, Dartmouth College 2002
Robert L. Hess Scholar-in-Residence, Brooklyn College, March 2002
Louis Armstrong Professor of Jazz Studies, Columbia University, 2000-2001
Schomburg Scholars-in-Residence Fellowship, Schomburg Center for Research in Black
Culture, New York, 2001-2002
Montgomery Fellow, Dartmouth College, 2000
USIA Visiting Scholar, Bogazaci University, Istanbul, Turkey, May 22-30, 1999.
Golden Dozens Teaching Prize, New York University, 1998-99
Outstanding book on Human Rights, Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights in
the U.S., 1998 [for Yo’ Mama’s DisFunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America]
Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University, 1997-98
Visiting Fellow, American Studies Program, University of Melbourne, Australia, 1996-97
Elected Member of the Society of American Historians, 1996-
Center for Multimedia Technology, New York University, 1995-96 [$25,000 grant to develop
CD Rom/PAD interactive software for young users to explore African American life in the Jim
Crow South]
Winner of the ABC CLIO Award [Best Scholarly Article that advances the field of U.S.
History], Organization of American Historians, 1995.
Outstanding Book Award, National Conference of Black Political Scientists, 1995.
Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship for Minorities, 1994-1995 [one year fellowship--
declined]
Institute for the Humanities, University of Michigan, 1994-1995
National Endowment for the Humanities, Fellowship for University Teachers, 1994-1995
(First) Stephen A. Stone Research Award, University of Michigan, 1993-1998
Rackham Faculty Summer Fellowship, University of Michigan, 1993
Rackham Faculty Research Grant, University of Michigan, 1993-94
Winner of the first biennial Elliot Rudwick Prize, Organization of American Historians, 1991
Co-winner of Francis Butler Simkins Prize, Southern Historical Association, 1991
Outstanding book on Human Rights, Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights in
the U.S., 1991.
Summer Research Support, University of Michigan, 1990-1992.
Institute for Research on Poverty, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1990-1991.
Faculty Development Research Grant, Emory University, 1989-1990.
President's Commission on the Status of Minorities, Emory University, 1989.
Carolina Minority Postdoctoral Fellowship, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1988-
1989.
CONSULTATION AND ADVISORY BOARDS
Advisor, “American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs,” Documentary film,
2010-
Advisor, “Many Rivers to Cross: A History of the African American People,” Henry Louis
Gates, Jr., and WNET, 2009-
Advisor, Black Panther Party Documentary Film, Fireflight Media, New York, 2008-
Advisor, “Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People,” film
by Thomas Allen Harris, 2007-
Advisor, “Free Angela & All Political Prisoners," film by Shola Lynch, 2005-
Advisor, “People’s History of the United States,” Television series based on Howard Zinn’s
book, 2005-
Consultant, “Loft Jazz Project,” Center for Documentary Studies, Duke University, project
director Sam Stephenson, 2003-
Advisor, “Greensboro: A Study in Truth and Justice,” film-in-progress by Adam Zucker, 2004-
Advisor, “Of Thee We Sing: Patriotic Song and American Culture.” Film-in-progress by Rena
Kosersky
Advisory Board, Center for Jazz Studies, Columbia University, 2000-
Program Advisory Committee, Kopkind Colony, Guilford, Vermont, 2000-
Consultant, “National Jazz Museum in Harlem,” under direction of Loren Schoenberg, 2003-
Consultant, “The Murder of Emmett Till,” film by Stanley Nelson, 2002
Consultant, “Prelude to a Movement: Black Paris and the Struggle for Freedom,” film-in-
progress by Kris Jefferson, 2002-
Consultant, “Soul on Soul: The Life of Mary Lou Williams,” film-in-progress by Carol Bash,
2002-
Consultant, “One Nation Under a Groove: Music as Liberation Theology,” film by Phil Thorne,
2002-
Consultant/Advisor for “Black Left Out!: The African American & Latino Left in
California in the 1940’s and 1950s,” a film by Zeinabu Irene Davis, in progress, 2002-
Scholars’ Committee, National Center for the Preservation of Democracy, 2000-
Advisory Board, Center for Jazz Studies, Columbia University, 2000-
Program Advisory Committee, Kopkind Colony, Guilford, Vermont, 2000-
Consultant/Advisor for “Two Towns of Jasper,” a film by Marco Williams.
Advisor, “Internet Access and HBCU’s,” collaborative project between E-57 and National
Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education (NAFEO);
Consultant/Advisor, “Jazz,” Ken Burns documentary, Florentine Films,
Advisory Board, “Behind the Veil,” documentary film by Richard Wormser;
Consultant, “Race,” multi-part documentary, Roja Productions, New York;
Consultant, “Marcus Mosiah Garvey,” in progress film by Stanley Nelson, 1998-
Advisory Board, “American Retrospective,” film in production by National Video Resources,
directed by Timothy Gunn, 1998-
“The American Century,” ABC Special multi-hour documentary hosted by Peter Jennings.
“Class” a film project by Snitow-Kaufman Productions, 1998
Worker’s Rights Board, NY Jobs with Justice, 1997-
“Behind the Veil” [multivolume book project on African Americans in the Jim Crow South],
Center for Documentary Studies, Duke University, 1997-
Advisory Board, “Jazz” [Ken Burns documentary, Florentine Films], 1997-
Advisor, “The Century,” [Two-part retrospective on 20th century American art] Whitney
Museum of American Art, 1996-1998
Advisory Board, “Behind the Veil” [documentary film by Richard Wormser--unrelated to CDS
project listed above], 1996-
Advisory Board, “I’m Gonna Make Me a World” [History of Black Arts in the 20th Century--
tentative title, documentary film, Blackside Incorporated, 1995-
Consultant, “Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?, children’s game show for public television
(WGBH), 1995-97
Advisory Board, "20 From the 20th Century: A Social History of American Space,"
Documentary Television series, Thirteen/WNET, New York, New York.
Consultant, Roja Productions [Independent film production company, Boston, Mass.], 1994-
Consultant, California Newsreel, 1993-
Advisory Board, "Mandinka Rap," Independent documentary film on the African Origins of
Popular music and Dance, Show N'Tell Productions, 1993-
Advisory Board, "The Afrocentricity Project," Film and Media project under directorship of
Ron Jackson, Hunter College, 1992-
Advisory Board, "Their Cause Was Liberty: American Women in the Spanish Civil War,"
documentary film by Julia Newman, 1991-
Encyclopedia Americana [updated the entry for "Black Americans" contributed by Nell Irvin
Painter in 1985 ed.], 1991
Consultant for, and appeared in, Mykola Kulish's documentary film, "In the Land of Jim
Crow," 1991
Advisory Board, Blackside Productions, Inc., 1990-
Contributing Editor, Encyclopedia of the American Left, edited by Paul Buhle, Mary Jo Buhle
and Dan Georgakas (New York: Garland Publishers, 1990).
Advisor to Hadley Productions, Inc., for theater production of All God's Dangers: the Life of
Nate Shaw, performed off-Broadway, 1989
Research Director and Consultant, Pasadena Minority History Foundation, 1986
Principal Researcher and Script Consultant, Pasadena Historical Society, 1984
EDITORIAL BOARDS
Editorial Advisory Board, American National Biography, 2013-
Editorial Board, American Music, 2010-
Editorial Board, Jazz Perspectives, 2006-
Editorial Advisory Board, Encyclopedia of Strikes in American History, 2002
Editorial Board, Journal of African American History, 2002-
Editorial Advisory Board, Echo: A Music Centered Journal, 2003-
Editorial Advisory Board, Against the Current, 2000-
Editorial Board, New Labor Forum, 2000-
Editorial Board, Souls, 1997-
Editorial Board Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noire, 1996-
Editorial Advisory Board Contours: A Journal of the African Diaspora, 1997-
Editorial Advisory Committee, Center for Black Music Research (includes Black Music
Research Journal, Lenox Avenue, and the book series “Music of the Black Diaspora” published
by University of California Press).
Editorial Advisory Board, “Culture, Politics, and the Cold War,” University of Massachusetts
Press (Book series), 1996-
Editorial Board, Journal of American History, 1995-1998
Series Editor (with Jan Radway, Duke University), "Popular Cultures, Everyday Lives,"
Columbia University Press, 1995-
Editorial Advisory Board, Race Traitor, 1994-
Editorial Advisory Committee, Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, edited
by Robert O'Meally and Jack Salzman, (New York: Macmillan, 1996).
Editorial Advisory Board, Oxford Companion to American History (Oxford University Press,
in progress)
Editorial Collective, Radical History Review, 1992-
Editorial Board of Ufahamu, an interdisciplinary journal of African studies, 1983-1986
SELECTED PROFESSIONAL SERVICE
Organization of American Historians, Distinguished Lecturer, 2013 -
External Advisory Panel, History Faculty, University of Oxford, 2009-2010
External Review Committee, Harvard University’s African and African-American Studies
Department, 2005.
Open Society Institute, Community Fellowships Evaluations Committee, June 2004 and June
2005.
Advisory Board and Seminar Leader, New Ways of Looking at the World [Organization of
Public School Teachers].
Faculty Seminar Leader (“The Making of the African Diaspora”) Faculty Resource Network,
2000
Fellowships Review Committee, International Center for Advanced Study, NYU, 1999-2000
External Review Committee, Harvard University’s Afro-American Studies Department, 1999
New York State Council for the Humanities, Board of Directors, 1996-98
Friends of the Bus Riders Union, Labor/Community Strategy Center, 1996-
National Humanities Center, Fellowships Evaluations Committee, 1995-96
Board of Directors, American Social History Project, Hunter College
Board of Directors, Davis-Putter Fund, 1996-
Rockefeller Foundation Grants in the Humanities, Review Board, 1995, 1996, 1998
External Review Committee, Wellesley College’s Afro-American Studies Program, February
1995
Organization of American Historians, Program Committee, 1993-94
Social Science Research Council, Program on Research on the Underclass, 1992-93
National Historical Publications and Records Commission, Organization of American
Historians representative, 1992-1995
Board of Governors, Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives, Brandeis University, 1991-
Social Science Research Council Committee on Africa, Subcommittee on Diaspora Studies,
1990-
Project co-director, "African-American Life in the Jim Crow South," the Center for
Documentary Studies, Duke University, 1989-1990
PUBLICATIONS
BOOKS
Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2012)
Best Book, Jazz Times Expanded Critics Poll, 2012
Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (The Free Press, 2009).
Best Book About Jazz 2009, Jazz Journalists Association
Music in American Culture Award, American Musicological Association
Ambassador Award for Book of Special Distinction, English Speaking Union;
PEN Open Book Award, PEN American Center
Finalist, 2010 PEN USA Literary Award
ASCAP Deems-Taylor Award
Best Non-Fiction Book, Hurston/Wright Legacy Award.
Booklist – Starred Review
Selected by New York Times Book Review – Top 100 books of 2009
Selected by San Francisco Gate – Top 100 books of 2009
**Italian translation: Thelonious Monk: Storia di un Genio Americano, trans.
Marco Bertoli (Roma: Minimum Fax, 2012).
Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (Beacon Press, 2002)
with Howard Zinn and Dana Frank, Three Strikes: The Fighting Spirit of Labor's Last Century
(Beacon Press, 2001)
Yo’ Mama’s Disfunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America (Boston: Beacon Press,
1997). Selected Best book of 1997 by Village Voice; Outstanding Book on Human Rights,
Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights in the United States, 1997-98.
**Translated in Japanese, as Yo Mama’s DisFunktional!: Representing America’s Urban
Crisis (Hanmoto Publishers, 2007), translated by Kosuzu Abe and Katsuyuki Murata. New
foreword by author
***10th Anniversary Edition, revised with new Introduction
Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class (New York: The Free Press, 1994).
Outstanding Book, National Conference of Black Political Scientists, 1995.
Into the Fire: African Americans Since 1970 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996) [Vol.
10 of the Young Oxford History of African Americans series, see below] Selected Outstanding
Book for the Teen Age, New York Public Library, 1997
with Vincent Harding and Earl Lewis, We Changed the World: African Americans, 1945-1970
(Oxford University Press, 1997).
Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression (Chapel Hill, NC:
University of North Carolina Press, 1990). Winner of the inaugural Elliot Rudwick Prize,
Organization of American Historians, 1991; co-winner, Francis Butler Simkins Prize, Southern
Historical Association; Outstanding book on Human Rights, Gustavus Myers Center for the Study
of Human Rights in the United States, 1991.
Twenty-fifth anniversary edition of Hammer and Hoe, forthcoming with new Introduction, 2015
EDITED BOOKS AND COLLECTIONS
Co-edited with Stephen Tuck, The Other Special Relationship: Race, Rights and Riots in Britain
and the United States (forthcoming Palgrave, 2015)
Co-edited with Franklin Rosemont, Black, Brown and Beige: Surrealist Writings from Africa and
the African Diaspora (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2009).
Winner, American Book Award, the Before Columbus Foundation.
Co-edited with Lisa Brock and Karen Sotiropolous, Transnational Black Studies: A Special Issue
of Radical History Review (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004).
Co-edited with Earl Lewis, To Make Our World Anew: A History of African Americans (Oxford
University Press, 2000). Two Volume edition, 2004.
Selection of History Book Club and Choice Outstanding Academic Title.
Chosen as an Outstanding book on Human Rights, Gustavus Myers Center for the Study
of Human Rights in the United States, 2002.
Co-edited with Sidney J. Lemelle, Imagining Home: Class, Culture, and Nationalism in the
African Diaspora (London: Verso Books, 1995).
General Editor with Earl Lewis, Young Oxford History of African Americans: (1995-1998)
WORKS-IN-PROGRESS
The Education of Ms. Grace Halsell: An Intimate History of the American Century (ms. In
progress)
Mike Brown’s Body: Meditations on Race, War and Democracy (ms. In progress; Toni Morrison
Lectures, Princeton University Press)
(With Tera Hunter and Earl Lewis), A World To Gain: A History of African Americans (under
contract, Norton)
ESSAYS
“Yes, I Said ‘National Liberation,’” Letters to Palestine: Writers Respond to War and
Occupation, ed. Vijay Prashad (London: Verso Books, 2015 forthcoming)
“Our South African Freedom Dreams,” Ufahamu 38, no. 1 (Fall 2014), 239-244.
“Apartheid’s Black Apologists,” in Jon Soske and Sean Jacobs, eds., Apartheid Israel:
The Politics of an Analogy (E-book published by Africa is a Country, 2014)
“Another Freedom Summer,” Journal of Palestine Studies (forthcoming, 2015)
“Why We Won’t Wait: Resisting the War Against the Black and Brown Underclass,”
Counterpunch (November 25, 2014), http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/11/25/75039/
“Foreword,” Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around: Forty Years of Movement
Building with Barbara Smith, eds. Alethia Jones, Virginia Eubanks, and Barbara Smith
(Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2014).
“When the Smoke Clears in Gaza,” Mondoweiss (August 8, 2014),
http://mondoweiss.net/2014/08/when-smoke-clears.html
“In Search of Grace Halsell,” The Link 47, no. 1 (January – February, 2014),
http://ameu.org/PDF-Archives/vol47_issue1_2014.aspx
with Erica Lorraine Williams, “Madiba in Palestine,” Counterpunch (December 10,
2013), http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/12/10/madiba-in-palestine/
“Big, Glitzy Marches are Not Movements,” Boston Review (August 28, 2013),
http://www.bostonreview.net/us/robin-kelley-big-glitzy-marches-are-not-movements
“Empire State of Mind,” Counterpunch (August 16 – 18, 2013),
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/08/16/empire-state-of-mind/
“The New Freedom Vote,” Counterpunch (August 6, 2013),
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/08/06/the-new-freedom-vote/
“The U.S. vs. Trayvon Martin,” Counterpunch (July 15, 2013),
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/07/15/the-us-v-trayvon-martin/
[reprinted in nearly a dozen publications, including Huffington Post, and Kevin
Alexander Gray, Jeffrey St. Clair, and JoAnn Wypijewski, eds., Killing Trayvons: An
Anthology of American Violence (Petrolia, CA: Counterpunch, 2014)
“Confounding Myths,” in AxME: Ellen Gallagher, edited by Juliet Bingham (London:
Tate Publishing, 2013), 8-21.
“Letter from a West Bank Refugee Camp,” Mondoweiss (June 28, 2013),
http://mondoweiss.net/2013/06/letter-refugee-camp.html
“Love for Sale,” in Miles Davis: The Complete Illustrated History (Minneapolis:
Voyageur Press, 2012)
“Building a Progressive Movement in 2012,” Souls 14, nos. 1-2 (2012), 10-18.
“Gaza: What Would Lincoln Do?” Counterpunch (November 29, 2012),
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/11/29/gaza-what-would-lincoln-do/.
Foreword to Davarian Baldwin and Minkah Makalani eds., Escape From New York! The
'Harlem Renaissance' Reconsidered (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013)
“My American Dream Sounds Like Rubén Blades,” National Public Radio (July 10, 2012),
www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2012/07/10/155838779/my-american-dream-sounds-like-rub-n-
blades
“Beautiful Resistance: Revolutionary Theater in Palestine,” Boston Review (March/April
2012)
“Neoliberalism’s Challenge,” Boston Review (January/ February 2012)
“Freedom Democrat or Neoliberal?,” in Charles Henry, ed., The Obama Effect (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 2012)
“He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands’: U. S. History and its Discontents in the
Obama Age,” Journal of American Studies, 45, no. 1 (2011), 185–200 [Harold Vyvyan
Harmsworth Lecture, Oxford University, 2009]
Foreword to Omar H. Ali, In the Lion’s Mouth: Black Populism in the New South, 1886-
1900 (Jackson, Miss.: University Press of Mississippi, 2010)
“The Freedom Dreams of Race Rebels: A Foreword,” in Buras, K. L., Randels, J.,
Salaam, K., eds., Pedagogy, Policy, and the Privatized City: Stories of Dispossession and
Defiance from New Orleans (New York: Teachers College Press, 2010).
“Foreword,” to Angela Davis, The Meaning of Freedom (San Francisco: City Lights
Publishers, 2010).
“The Jacksons,” American Communist History 7, no. 2 (2009), 175-180.
“Thelonious Monk Plays Rock and Roll?,” Zocalo Public Square (2009),
http://zocalopublicsquare.org/thepublicsquare/2009/10/07/thelonious-monk-plays-rock-
and-roll/read/
“A Historian in the World,” Journal of African American History. Vol. 94 (3) (2009), pp.
362-369.
“Will Obama Be the First ‘Freedom’ Democrat?” Counterpunch (November 19, 2008)
“President-Elect Barack Obama: A Postracial President Who Should Focus the Country
on Race,” U. S. News and World Report (November 5, 2008),
http://www.usnews.com/articles/opinion/2008/11/05/
Introduction to Thomas Sayers Ellis, “The Obama Hour,” The Root (June 25, 2008),
http://www.theroot.com/id/46590
“Burning Symbols: The Work of Art in the Age of Tyrannical (Re)Production,” in Hank
Willis Thomas: Pitch Blackness (New York: Aperture, 2008).
Foreword, Fred Ho, Wicked Theory/Naked Practice: A Fred Ho Reader (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2009)
“Looking Forward, Looking Back . . . Ten Years Later,” new Introduction to 2nd edition
of Yo’ Mama’s DisFunktional! Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America (Boston:
Beacon Press, 2008).
“Disappearing Acts: Harlem in Transition,” in The Suburbanization of New York: Is the
World’s Greatest City Becoming Just Another Town?, eds. Jerilou Hammett and Kingsley
Hammett (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007), 63-74.
“’A Day of Reckoning’: Dreams of Reparations,” in Redress for Historical Injustices in
the United States, eds. Michael T. Martin and Marilyn Yaquinto (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 2007), 203-221.
with Jonah Bossewitch, John Frankfurt, and Alexander Sherman, “Wiki Justice, Social
Ergonomics, And Ethical Collaborations,” in The Wild, Wild Wiki: Unsettling the
Frontiers of Cyberspace, eds., Matt Barton and Robert Cummings, (Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 2007).
“Looking Outward,” Foreword to Japanese edition of Yo’ Mama’s DisFunktional!:
Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America (Tokyo, 2006)
“’Freedom is Living’: LisaGay Hamilton’s Radical Imagination,” Transforming
Anthropology 14, no. 1 (April 2006), 2-9.
Foreword to Dipannita Basu and Sidney Lemelle, eds., The Vinyl Ain’t Final: Hip Hop
and the Globalization of Black Popular Culture (London: Pluto Press, 2006).
Foreword to Joao H. Costa Vargas, Catching Hell in the City of Angels: Life and
Meanings of Blackness in South Central Los Angeles (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 2006).
Foreword to Ai-jen Poo, et. al., Labor of Love: A Statistical, Legal, and Social Report on
the Demographics and Working Conditions of New York City’s Hidden Domestic Work
Industry (, 2007)
“Looking Backward: African Americans in the Postindustrial Era,” in Robert L. Harris
and Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, eds., The Columbia Guide to African American History Since
1939 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 101-119.
The Echo Returns: Vocalist Sathima Benjamin is Poised for a Comeback,” Jazz Times,
36, no. 2 (March 2006)
“On the Density of Black Being,” in Scratch, ed. Christine Kim (New York: Studio
Museum of Harlem, 2005) [catalogue essay on Marc Robinson]
Foreword to Horace Huntley, ed., “Footsoldiers All”: An Oral History of Birmingham’s
Civil Rights Movement (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, forthcoming)
“Cesaire’s Lessons for the New Empire,” Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noire 3, no. 1
(March 2004)
“Brooklyn’s Jazz Renaissance,” Institute for Studies in American Music Newsletter 33,
no. 2 (Spring 2004),
“Beneath the Underground: Exploring New Currents in Jazz,” in Robert O’Meally, ed., Uptown
Conversations (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004).
“Disappearing Acts: Capturing Harlem in Transition,” essay for Alice Attie’s photo collection,
Harlem on the Verge (New York: W.W. Norton, 2003).
“Lessons from a Sunset,” in Souls of My Brothers, eds. Dawn Marie Daniels and Candace Sandy
(New York: Plume, 2003).
Foreword to Shaka N’Zinga, A Disjointed Search for the Will to Live (New York: Softskull Press,
2003)
Foreword to Matthew Countryman, Jeanne Theoharis and Komozi Woodard, eds., Freedom North
(New York: Palgrave, 2003).
Foreword to Charlton McIlwain, Death in Black and White: Death and Black Family Ecology
(2004)
“First Crush,” in In Praise of Our Teachers, ed. by Gloria Wade-Gayles (Boston: Beacon Press,
2003).
With Williams Sales, Jr. and Lynette Jackson, “Critical Black History: A Symposium,” Socialism
and Democracy 17, no. 2 (Spring 2003).
“Breaking the Color Bind: A Decade of American Masters,” catalogue essay for African
American Art: 20th Century Masterworks, X (New York: Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, 2003)
“At Home with Thelonious Monk,” Pure Jazz: African American Classical Music 1, no. 4 (Fall
2002): 5-6.
“Reds, Blacks and Blues People,” in Everything but the Burden: What White People Are
Taking from Black People, ed. by Greg Tate (New York: Random House, 2003), 44-67.
“Airing Dirty Laundry: A Win for Workers Who Put the Finery in Fine Dining,” Village Voice
(January 15, 2003).
“Freedom Now Sweet: Surrealism and the Black World,” in Surrealist Subversions: Rants,
Writings & Images by the Surrealist Movement in the United States, edited by Ron Sakolsky and
Franklin Rosemont (Brooklyn, NY: Automedia, 2002), 134-150
“The Emancipatory Potential of Gay and Lesbian Struggles,” in Surrealist Subversions (see
above), 305.
“The McJob’s Untold Story – Redefining Politics from the So-Called Margin of Struggle,”
Surrealist Subversions (see above), 407-410.
“The Dozens,” Surrealist Subversions (see above), 592-594.
“The Art Ensemble of Chicago – All About Freedom,” Surrealist Subversions (see above), 640-
644.
“C.L.R. James and Pan-African Revolt,” Surrealist Subversions (see above), 674.
“Reflections on September 11: Freedom Dreams Undeferred,” Crisis Magazine
(September/October 2002), 14-17.
“The Jazz Wife: Muse and Manager,” New York Times (July 21, 2002) [reprinted as “Great Jazz
Duos: Wives Who Kept it Altogether,” International Herald Tribune (July 24, 2002); “Wives
Played Vital Role for Musicians,” San Jose Mercury News (July 28, 2002); “As Jazz Wife, Nellie
Monk Nurtured the Music and the Man,” Rocky Mount Telegram (July 22, 2002)]
“The Monk You’ve Never Heard,” Seeingblack.com (July 2002)
"Beyond the 'Real' World, or Why Black Intellectuals Need to Wake Up and Start
Dreaming,” Souls 4, no. 2 (Spring 2002).
“Finding the Strength to Love and Dream,” Chronicle of Higher Education (June 7, 2002)
[reprinted in several publications, including Swans and the New Internationalist, issue 351,
November 2002].
Foreword to Eric Mann, Dispatches from Durban (Los Angeles: Frontline Press, 2002)
“Rummaging through the ‘Trash Heaps of History,’” Foreword to Lin Shi Khan and Tony Perez,
Scottsboro Alabama: A Story in Linoleum Cuts, edited by Andrew Lee (New York University
Press, 2002).
“How the West was One: The African Diaspora and the Re-Mapping of U.S. History,” in Thomas
Bender, ed., Re-Thinking American History in a Global Age (Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 2002)
“Randy Weston’s African Rhythm,” New York Times (July 8, 2001).
“Miles Davis: The Chameleon of Cool,” New York Times (May 13, 2001).
“In a Mist: Thoughts on Ken Burns’s Jazz,” Institute for Studies in American Music Newsletter
30, no. 2 (Spring 2001), 8-10, 15.
“Fugitives from a Chain Store,” in Ellen Gallagher: Preserve, ed. by Jeff Fleming (Des Moines
Art Center, 2001)
Foreword to William H. Watkins, The White Architects of Black Education (New York: Teacher’s
College Press, 2001).
Foreword to William Loren Katz and Marc Crawford, The Lincoln Brigade: A Picture History,
2nd ed. (New York: Atheneum, 2001)
“Poetry and the Political Imagination: Aime Cesaire and the Applications of Surrealism,” Lip
Magazine (July 9, 2001).
“A New Look at the Communist Manifesto” and “Surrealist Subversion in Everyday Life:
Response,” Race Traitor nos. 13-14 (Summer 2001), 135-39, 197-202.
“Thirteen Ways of Looking at Jazz,” New York Times (January 14, 2001)
“Harlem Disappears,” Metropolis (April 2001), 90-96.
“A Doubting Dad Yields to the Radio Wars,” New York Times, December 24, 2000.
“On the Disappearance of Joe Wood, Jr.,” in Kevin Powell, ed., Step Into a World: A Global
Anthology of the New Black Literature (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2000) [slightly revised
version of “Who Will Mourn Joe Wood, Jr.?” See below]
“How the West was One: On the Uses and Limitations of Diaspora,” Black Scholar 30, nos. 3-4
(Fall-Winter 2000), 31-35.
“Radical Organizing During the Depression,” in Major Problems in African-American
History. Volume II: From Freedom to ‘Freedom Now,’ 1865-1990s, eds. Thomas Holt
and Elsa Barkley Brown (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000)
“The DJ Moves Into a New Arena,” New York Times, May 28, 2000.
“Groovin’ High: Plugging into the Jazz Underground,” American Visions 15, no. 3 (June/July
2000), 22-25.
“New Monastery: Monk and the Jazz Avant-Garde,” Black Music Research Journal 19, no. 2
(Fall, 1999), 135-168.
“Foreword” to 50th Anniversary edition of Aime Cesaire, Discourse on Colonialism (Monthly
Review Press, 2000).
with Tiffany Patterson, “Unfinished Migrations: Reflections on the African Diaspora and the
Making of the Modern World,” African Studies Review 43, no. 1 (April 2000), 11-45.
““Slangin’ Rocks . . . Palestinian Style”: Dispatches from the Occupied Zones of North America,”
in Jill Nelson, ed., Police Brutality (New York: Norton, 2000).
“Foreword” to New edition of Cedric Robinson, Black Marxism: The Making of the Black
Radical Tradition (University of North Carolina Press, 2000).
“Stormy Weather: Reconstructing Black (Inter) Nationalism in the Cold War Era,” in Eddie
Glaude, ed., Is it Nation Time?: Re-Thinking Black Nationalism (University of Chicago Press,
2002).
“Foreword” to Deborah Willis, Reflections in Black: A History of African American
Photographers (New York: Norton, 2000).
“Interview of Herbert Aptheker” and “Afterword,” Journal of American History 87, no. 1 (March
2000), 151-171.
“Tyson: Front and Beckford,” Code Magazine (January 2000), 68-74.
“‘But a Local Phase Of a World Problem’: Black History’s Global Vision, 1883-1950,” Journal
of American History 86, no. 3 (December 1999), 1045-77.
“Building Bridges: The Challenge of Organized Labor in Communities of Color,” New Labor
Forum (Fall/Winter 1999), 42-58. [Commissioned by the Aspen Institute.]
“A Poetics of Anticolonialism,” Monthly Review 51, no. 6 (November 1999), 1-21.
with Betsy Esch, “Black Like Mao: Red China and Black Revolution,” Souls 1, no. 4 (Fall 1999),
6-41.
“The People In Me,” Utne Reader (September-October 1999), 79-81; originally appeared in One
World (December 1997), reprinted in ColorLines 2, no. 1 (Winter 1999).
“The Communist Party,” Encarta Africana: Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Black History and
Culture CD ROM (Microsoft Encarta, 1999), 30 page essay on interactive CD ROM.
“Malcolm X,” Encarta Africana: Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Black History and Culture CD
ROM (Microsoft Encarta, 1999), 24 page essay on interactive CD ROM.
“Remembering Dr. John Henrik Clarke,” Black Issues Book Review (Fall 1999).
“Who Will Mourn Joe Wood, Jr.?” New York Newsday (July 29, 1999), reprinted in the
Amsterdam News (August 6, 1999), and Martha’s Vineyard Times (August 8, 1999).
“John Henrik Clarke: Self-Made Angry Man,” New York Times Magazine (January 6, 1999), 17-
18.
Introduction to 150th Anniversary Edition of Karl Marx and Frederich Engels, The Communist
Manifesto (Charles Kerr Publishers, 1998).
“Double-V: African Americans and the Homefront,” in From “Rosie” to “Roosevelt: A Film
History of World War II Resource Guide (New York: National Video Resources, 1998).
“An Independent Black Radical Movement Can Connect with the Rest of the World,” Ahora
Now! 6 (1998) [also translated in Spanish under title: “Un Movimiento Radical Negro
Independiente Puede Conectar con el Resto del Mundo.”]
“Integration: What’s Left?” Nation 267, no. 20 (December 14, 1998), 17-19.
"House Negroes on the Loose: Malcolm X and the Black Bourgeoisie, “Callaloo 21, no. 2 (1998),
419-35.
“There Are No Coons Here,” Amistad Source Book: Lyric Opera of Chicago (Lyric Opera of
Chicago, 1997), 65-67. Reprinted in The History Teacher 31, no. 3 (May 1998), 399-402.
Symposium on the 100th Anniversary of the Communist Manifesto, Against the Current (Winter
1998).
Foreword to Ira Berlin, Marc Favreau, and Steven F. Miller, eds., Remembering Slavery: African
Americans Talk about their Personal Experiences of Slavery and Emancipation (New York: New
Press, 1998).
“Dig They Freedom: Meditations on History and the Black Avant-Garde,” Lenox Avenue: A
Journal of Interartistic Inquiry vol. 3 (1997), 13-27.
“The New Urban Working Class and Organized Labor,” New Labor Forum 1, no. 1 (Fall 1997),
6-18.
“Neo-Cons of the Black Nation: The Problems of Free Market Nationalism,” Black
Renaissance/Renaissance Noir, vol. 1, no. 2 (1997).
“Nap Time: Historicizing the Afro,” Fashion Theory 1, no. 4 (1997), 339-352.
“The Proletariat Goes to College,” Social Text (Winter 1996-97), reprinted in Will Teach for
Food, edited by Cary Nelson (London: Routledge, 1997).
“Identity Politics and Class Struggle,” New Politics 6, no. 2 (Winter 1997), 84-96.
“Looking B(l)ackward,” in Race Consciousness: African-American Studies for the New Century,
edited by Judith Jackson Fossett and Jeffrey A. Tucker (New York: New York University Press,
1997)
with Paul Buhle, “Allies of a Different Sort: Jews and Blacks in the American Left,” in Struggle
in the Promisedland: The History of Black/Jewish Relations in the U.S., edited by Jack Salzman
and Cornel West (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
"Playing for Keeps: African-American Youth in the Postindustrial City," in The House that Race
Built: Black Americans/U.S. Terrain, edited by Wahneema Lubiano (New York: Random House,
1997), 195-231.
"Check the Technique: Black Urban Culture and the Predicament of Social Science," in In Near
Ruins: Cultural Theory at the End of the Century, edited by Nick Dirks (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1997).
“Countering the Conspiracy to Ignore Black Girls” in The Faith of Our Fathers: African
American Men Reflect on Fatherhood, edited by Andre C. Willis (New York: Dutton, 1996).
[excerpted in the Atlanta Constitution on Father’s Day, June 16, 1996.]
“Representin’ What?: Robin D. G. Kelley and Philip Brian Harper Discuss Black Popular
Culture, Image Politics, and the Death of Tupac Shakur,” frieze: contemporary art and culture 31
(November/December 1996): 41-44.
“Making History: Everyday Acts of Opposition in the Working Class Struggle for Civil Rights,”
Ahora Now, vol. 1, no. 3 (1996) [also translated in Spanish under title: “Haciendo Historia:
Hazanas Cotidianas de la Clase Trabajadora en la Lucha por los Derechos Civiles.”]
“Freedom Riders (the Sequel),”The Nation (February 5, 1996)
“Christopher Columbus Alston, 1913-1995,” Against the Current (Winter 1995-96)
“Going Beyond Personal Responsibility,” We Speak: Publication of the Black Student Leadership
Network (Winter 1996); reprinted in Against the Current (January/February 1996).
"Kickin' Reality, Kickin' Ballistics: Gangsta Rap and Postindustrial Los Angeles," in Droppin'
Science: Critical Essays on Rap Music and Hip Hop Culture, edited by Eric Perkins,
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996).
"The World the Diaspora Made: C.L.R. James and the Politics of History," in Rethinking C. L .R.
James, edited by Grant Farred (New York and Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1996)
"Confessions of a Nice Negro, or Why I Shaved My Head," in Speak My Name: Black Men on
Masculinity and the American Dream, edited by Don Belton (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996).
[reprinted in Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality: The Philosophical Questions, eds. Naomi Zack,
Laurie Shrage and Crispin Sartwell (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1998).
"Introduction" to C.L.R. James, A History of Pan-African Revolt (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr
Publishers, 1995).
“Writing Black Working-Class History from Way, Way Below,” Vniversity (Spring 1995)
Response to Eugene Rivers, “Beyond the Nationalism of Fools,” Boston Review (October 1995).
“The Critics Dilemma,” The Volunteer (Fall 1995).
"Re-Inventing the NAACP," Op Ed., New York Newsday, February 12, 1995.
"A Lifelong Radical: Clyde Johnson, 1908-1994," Radical History Review 62 (Spring 1995).
"Hip Hop Culture," in A History of the African American People, edited by James O. Horton and
Lois Horton (London: Salamander Books, Ltd., 1995).
"Going to the Roots," Symposium on Race and Racism, Social Text (1995)
"'Afric's Sons With Banner Red': African-American Communists and the Politics of Culture,
1919-1934," in Class, Culture, and Nationalism in the African Diaspora, co-edited by Sidney J.
Lemelle and Robin D. G. Kelley, (London: Verso Books, 1995).
"Response" to Eugene Genovese, "The Question," Dissent (July, 1994).
"The Communist Party of the United States of America," in Encyclopedia of African-American
Culture and History, edited by Robert O'Meally and Jack Salzman, (New York: Macmillan,
1994).
"Malcolm X," in A Companion to American Thought, edited by Richard Fox and James
Kloppenberg (London: Basil Blackwell, 1994).
"'We Are Not What We Seem': Re-thinking Black Working-Class Opposition in the Jim Crow
South," Journal American History 80, no. 1 (June 1993): 75-112. Reprinted in Kenneth Goings,
ed. The New African American Urban History (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1996);
Reprinted in Raymond D’Angelo, ed., The American Civil Rights Movement: Readings and
Interpretations (McGraw Hill, 2001), 121-146.
"The Black Poor and the Politics of Opposition in a New South City, 1929-1970," in The
"Underclass" Debate: Views from History, edited by Michael Katz, (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1993), 293-333.
"Black Popular Culture and Contemporary Urban America [course syllabus]," Radical History
Review 57 (Fall 1993), 186-196.
"Could an All-African Army Liberate Haiti?" Daily Challenge 21, no. 58 (June 22, 1992).
"This Ain't Ethiopia, But It'll Do," Daily Challenge 21, no. 58 (June 22, 1992).
"Straight From Underground," The Nation (June 8, 1992) [reprinted in The Chicago Reporter 21,
no. 7 (July 1992); Works in Progress {South African journal} (August 1992)].
Entries for "Lucy Parsons," "Louise Thompson Patterson," "Claudia Jones," and "The Left," in
Darlene Clark Hine, Elsa Barkley Brown, and Rosalyn Terborg Penn, eds., Encyclopedia of Black
Women's History (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Carlson Publishers, 1993).
"Notes on Deconstructing 'the Folk,'" American Historical Review 97, no. 5 (December 1992),
1400-1408.
"The Riddle of the Zoot: Malcolm Little and Black Cultural Politics During World War II," in Joe
Wood, ed., Malcolm X: In Our Own Image (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992). [reprinted in
several anthologies, including Race and the Subject of Masculinity, eds. Harry Stecopoulos and
Michael Uebel (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997)]
"'This Ain't Ethiopia, But It'll Do,'" [Introduction], African-Americans and the Spanish Civil War:
"This Ain't Ethiopia, But It'll Do", edited by Danny Duncan Collum (New York: G.K. Hall,
1992).
"The Religious Odyssey of African Radicals: Notes on the Communist Party of South Africa,
1921-1934," Radical History Review 51 (1991): 5-24. Reprinted in United States and South
Africa: The Historical Field of Social and Cultural Interaction, edited by Ntongela Masilela
"Excerpts from Hammer and Hoe," Alabama Heritage 19 (Winter 1991): 32-45.
Entries for "Birmingham, Alabama," "The Share Croppers Union," "The Southern Negro Youth
Congress," "The Scottsboro Case," "Eula Gray," "Claudia Jones," "Louise Thompson Patterson,"
"The Southern Worker and the Communist Press in the South," and "W.E.B. DuBois," in The
Encyclopedia of the American Left, edited by Paul Buhle, Mary Jo Buhle and Dan Georgakas
(New York: Garland Publishers, 1990).
"A New War in Dixie: Communists and the Unemployed in Birmingham, Alabama, 1930-1933,"
Labor History 30, no. 3 (Summer 1989): 367-384.
with Paul Buhle, "The Oral History of the U.S. Left: Survey and Interpretation," Journal of
American History 76, no. 2 (September 1989): 537-550.
"'Comrades, Praise Gawd for Lenin and Them!': Ideology and Culture Among Black Communists
in Alabama, 1930-1935," Science and Society 52, no. 1 (Spring, 1988): 59-82.
"The Third International and the Struggle for National Liberation in South Africa, 1921-1928"
Ufahamu 15, nos. 2 and 3 (1986).
"Problems of Socialist Transformation in Africa: The Congolese Experience," Ufahamu 13, nos.
2 and 3 (1984): 259-282.
"The Role of the International Sports Boycott in the Anti- Apartheid Movement," Ufahamu 13,
nos. 2 and 3 (1984): 26-39.
Selected PUBLISHED INTERVIEWS WITH ROBIN D. G. KELLEY
Jordan T. Camp, “Black Radicalism, Marxism, and Collective Memory: An Interview with Robin
D. G. Kelley,” American Quarterly 65.1 (2013): 215-230.
“Justin Desmangles Interviews Robin D. G. Kelley,” Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noire
(April 1, 2010)
Sascha Feinstein, “An Interview with Robin D. G. Kelley on Thelonious Monk,” Brilliant
Corners: A Journal of Jazz and Literature 14, no. 1 (Winter 2009)
“Robin Kelley’s Transcendental Thelonious Monk,” Radio Open Source Interview, with
Christopher Lydon, December 23, 2009. http://www.radioopensource.org/robin-kelleys-
transcendental-thelonious-monk/
“Robin D. G. Kelley on Thelonious Monk: The Man, The Myth, The Music,” Interview by Victor
Schermer, All About Jazz (February 20, 2010).
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=35598
“Robin D. G. Kelley on Thelonious Monk,” Interview with Jerry Jazz Musician, December 28,
2009. http://www.jerryjazzmusician.com/mainHTML.cfm?page=kelley-monk.html#kell%20book
“Bop's Boswell: Robin D.G Kelley's Thelonious Monk Biography,” Interview by Maxwell
Chandler, October 19, 2010. http://www.jazzpolice.com/content/view/9132/79/
“An Interview with Robin D. G. Kelley by Benjamin Holtzman,” In the Middle of a
Whirlwind (Fall 2008), http://inthemiddleofthewhirlwind.wordpress.com/an-interview-
with-robin-dg-kelley/
Reprinted in The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest
“History and Hope: An Interview with Robin D. G. Kelley,” in Critics at Work:
Interviews, 1993-2003, ed. By Jeffrey J. Williams (New York: NYU Press, 2004), 294-
315.
“Let the Dreamer Awake: Talking with Robin D. G. Kelley,” Political Affairs (February
2004).
“Robin Kelley: Historian [Interviewed by Farah Jasmine Griffin],” Artist and Influence 33 (2004),
68-83.
LINER/SLEEVE NOTES, PROGRAM NOTES
Liner Notes for Thelonious Monk, Paris 1969 (Blue Note, 2013)
Liner Notes for Claire Daly, Baritone Monk (North Coast, 2012)
Liner Notes for Randy Weston, The Storyteller: Live at Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola (Motema Music
MTM -51, released 2010)
Liner Notes for Taylor Bynum, John Herbert, and Gerald Cleaver, The Book of Three (Rogue Art,
released 2010)
Liner Notes for Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane Live at Carnegie Hall (Blue Note Records,
released 2005)
“Monk’s Moods,” Program Notes, Jazz at Lincoln Center (December 2003)
“Jazz and Africa,” Program Notes, Jazz at Lincoln Center (February 2003)
Liner Notes for Thelonious Monk, Thelonious Monk Quartet, Live in New York: vols. 1 and 2
(Thelonious Records)
Liner Notes for Thelonious Monk, Thelonious Monk Transforms ‘I’m Getting Sentimental Over
You’ (Thelonious Records)
Liner Notes for Gil Scott-Heron, Bluebird’s Best: Gil Scott-Heron (RCA forthcoming)
“Fred Ho, Voice of the Dragon: Fighting Music and Swinging Martial Arts,” Playbill (November
2001).
Liner Notes for Randy Weston, Ancient Future (Mutable Music 17508-2) [2-CD set]
Liner Notes for Gil Scott-Heron, Free Will (BMG Classics 09026-63843-2) [2001]
BOOK REVIEWS AND REVIEW ESSAYS
“A Dreadful Deceit Argues Against a ‘Racial’ Past,” Los Angeles Times Book Review (December
20, 2013).
“Nina Simone, Diva Out of Carolina,” New York Times Book Review (February 25, 2010).
“They Came to Play: Sherrie Tucker Recovers the Women of Swing,” Pure Jazz: African
American Classical Music 1, no. 4 (Fall 2002): 24-25.
“Shirtwaist Tales,” Village Voice (May 21, 2002), 55. [Review of William Loren Katz and Laurie
R. Lehman, eds., The Cruel Years: American Voices at the Dawn of the 20th Century (New York:
The Apex Press, 2001).
“A Sole Response,” American Quarterly 52, no. 3 (Spring 2000), 533-45. [Review of Brian
Ward, Just My Soul Responding: Rhythm and Blues, Black Consciousness, and Race Relations
(Los Angeles and Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).]
Review of Timothy Tyson, Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), Southern Changes 22, no. 1 (Spring
2000).
Review of Randall Robinson, The Debt: What America Owes Blacks (New York: Dutton, 2000),
in Emerge Magazine (February 2000).
“The Crisis: Is Self-Help the Capitalism of Fools?” Voice Literary Supplement (March 1996).
[Review essay of Kenneth O’Reilly, Nixon’s Piano: Presidents and Racial Politics from
Washington to Clinton (New York: The Free Press, 1995); Stephen Steinberg, Turning
Back: The Retreat from Racial Justice in American Thought and Policy (Boston: Beacon
Press, 1995); Kofi Buenor Hadjor, Another America: The Politics of Race and Blame
(Boston: South End Press, 1995); Melvin L. Oliver and Thomas M. Shapiro, Black
Wealth/White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality (New York and London:
Routledge, 1995); Ian F. Haney Lopez, White By Law: The Legal Construction of Race
(New York: New York University Press, 1996); Manning Marable, Beyond Black and
White: Rethinking Race in American Politics and Society (London: Verso, 1995).
“No Easy Allies,” Quarterly Review of Black Books (September 1995)
[Review essay of Michael Lerner and Cornel West, Jews and Blacks: Let the Healing
Begin (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1995)].
"Memory and Politics," The Nation (October 3, 1994), 352-55.
[Review essay of James Goodman, Stories of Scottsboro: The Rape Case that
Shocked 1930s America and Revived the Struggle for Equality (New York:
Pantheon, 1994)].
"Know The Ledge," The Nation (March 14, 1994), 350-55.
[Review essay of Carl Husemoller Nightingale, On the Edge: A History of Poor Black
Children and Their American Dreams (New York: Basic Books, 1993)].
"Dead Labour," Monthly Review 45, no. 8 (December, 1993), 47-53.
[Review essay of Peter Linebaugh, The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the
18th Century (London: Penguin Books, 1991)].
"P.P.P.C. in Blackademe," The Nation (September 20, 1993).
[Review essay of Michael Dyson, Reflecting Black: African-American Cultural Criticism
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993)].
Review of Christopher Jencks, Re-thinking Social Policy: Race, Poverty, and the Underclass
(Cambridge, Mass., 1992), in Labour/Le Travail (Fall, 1993), 346-48.
Review of Fraser M. Ottanelli, The Communist Party of the United States: From the Depression
to World War II (New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press, 1991), in American
Historical Review 97, no. 1 (February 1992).
"An Archeology of Resistance," American Quarterly 44, no. 2 (June, 1992), 292-97.
[Review essay of James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden
Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990)]
"A Life of the Party," Tikkun (July-August, 1991).
[Review essay of Dorothy Healey and Maurice Isserman, Dorothy Healey Remembers: A
Life in the American Communist Party (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990)].
"Remapping the U.S. Left," Monthly Review 40, no. 8 (January 1989): 48-51.
[Review essay of Paul Buhle, Marxism in the USA: Remapping the History of the
American Left (London: Verso Books, 1987)]
"Philosophy and Black Liberation," Ufahamu 14, no. 2 (1985): 195-214.
[Review essay of Leonard Harris' Philosophy Born of Struggle]
Review of Robert Hill (ed.), The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association
Papers, vol. III, in Ufahamu 14, no. 3 (1985).
Review of Bill Freund, The Making of Contemporary Africa, in Ufahamu 13, nos. 2 and 3 (1984).
Review of Barry Munslow, Mozambique: The Revolution and Its Origins, in Ufahamu 13, nos. 2
and 3 (1984).
RECENT SELECTED INVITED LECTURES
“Southern Questions: Reflections on Said, Gramsci and the Colonized,” Conference: The Right of
Return to Edward Said, November 20, 2013.
“Making Emancipation: From Black Reconstruction to a Black President,” Plenary Session,
Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History, October 5, 2013.
"Three (Long) Marches, Three Moments of Crisis: 1963, 1988, 2013,” The Gramsci Monument,
Bronx, New York, August 28, 2013.
“The State of Black America 150 Years After the Emancipation Proclamation,” Celebrating St.
Clair Drake, Stanford University, April 18, 2013.
“’A Ruthless Criticism of Everything Existing’: Intellectual Work in Revolutionary Times,”
Regarding Humanities: A Symposium, Washington University, St. Louis, April 5, 2013.
“The Radical Imagination: A Conversation with Robin D. G. Kelley and Taylor Mac,” Foundry
Theater, New York, March 30, 2014.
“Red is the New Black: The Art and Politics of Scottsboro,” University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa,
February 6, 2014.
“The Changing Name: ‘Jazz’ in a Postmodern Era,” Universita' degli Studi di Cagliari, Italy, June
30, 2013
“War on the Working-Class: Rethinking the Immigrant in Global History,” Universita' degli Studi
di Cagliari, Italy, June 29, 2013
“The Rise and Fall of American Democracy,” Universita' degli Studi di Cagliari, Italy, June 28,
2013
“Thelonious Monk,” Siena Jazz University, Siena, Italy, March 25, 2013.
“Confounding Myths: Ellen Gallagher’s Modernity Remix,” University of Naples (Orientale),
Napoli, Italy, March 21, 2013
“The Rise and Decline of American Democracy: Black Radicalism in the Era of Neoliberalism,”
University of Bologna, Atlantic Studies, March 20, 2013.
"The Long Rise and Short Decline of American Democracy," Charles Phelps Taft Lecture,
University of Cincinnati, February 21, 2013.
"Neoliberalism and the War on Our Youth," Anne Braden Memorial Lecture, University of
Louisville, Thursday, Nov. 8, 2012.
"Obama's Socialist Plot?: Democracy in the Age of Neoliberalism," Penn State University,
October 4, 2012
“Organizing in the Era of Neoliberalism,” Excluded Workers Congress, Los Angeles, February
18, 2012
“The Future in the Present: Preliminary Thoughts on the Occupy Movement and Other
Challenges to Neoliberalism,” Center for Race and Gender, U.C. Berkeley, November 14, 2011.
“Thelonious Monk: Reflections,” Berklee College of Music, Boston, October 25, 2011
“Faking It For Freedom: Grace Halsell's Amazing Journey through the Minefields of Race, Sex,
Empire, and War -- A 20th Century Love Story,” African American Studies Distinguished
Lecture, Wesleyan University, April 14, 2011.
“"History from the Trenches: Re-Reading Gerald Gill in our Current State of War," Inaugural
Gerald R. Gill Memorial Lectures, Tufts University, April 11, 2011.
“Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times,” Paul Lyons Memorial
Lecture, Stockton College, New Jersey, April 7, 2011.
“Place is the Space: The ‘Hood as a Locus of Jazz History,” Spatial History Seminar, Harvard
University, February 4, 2011.
“Race in the 21st Century,” Keynote Address, Second Biennial Interdisciplinary Conference on
Race, Monmouth College, November 12, 2010.
“Monk and Nellie: A Love Story,” Allison Davis and John Davis Distinguished Lecture and
Performance (piano), Williams College, November 11, 2010
“The Meaning of (a) Life: The Work of Biography in American Studies,” Jan Cohen Memorial
Lecture, Trinity College, November 10, 2010
“Place is the Space: The ‘Hood as a Locus of Jazz History,” Distinguished lecture and
performance (piano), Tulane University, November 5, 2010.
“’When Africa Was the Thing’: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times,” Solomon Katz
Distinguished Visiting Lecturer in the Humanities, Simpson Humanities Center, University of
Washington, October 27, 2010
“The Jazz Atlantic: Modern Music in the Age of African Liberation,” Ioan Davies Memorial
Lecture, York University, Toronto, Canada, October 7, 2010.
“Jazz Sahara: Ahmed Abdul-Malik’s Islamic Experimentalism,” Lecture Department of
Ethnomusicology, Faculty of Music, University of Oxford, June 15, 2010.
“Post-Racial or Beloved Community? Notes on the Future of American Radicalism in the Obama
Age,” Bristol Radical History Group, Bristol, United Kingdom, June 13, 2010.
“'Burning Symbols’: Hank Willis Thomas and the Work of Art in the Age of Tyrannical
(Re)Production,” American History Seminar, Rothermere American Institute, University of
Oxford, June 2, 2010.
“Africa Speaks, American Answers: Jazz in the Age of Decolonization,” The Queen’s College,
Belfast, Northern Ireland, March 24, 2010.
“‘He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands’: History and its Discontents in the Age of Obama,
Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Lecture, University of Oxford, November 9, 2009.
"’North of the Sunset’: Thelonious Monk’s Los Angeles", Distinguished Lecture Oral HIstory
Program, Oral History Program, UCLA, October 15, 2009.
“New Freedom Dreams", Keynote lecture, Second Annual Pan-African Studies Forum, Cal State
Los Angeles, May 26, 2009.
"Examining the Shift from Anti-racism to Post-racial", Keynote address, 9th Annual Unity
Through Diversity Forum, Center for Multicultural Affairs, Duke University, Spring 2009.
"Race in the Age of Obama", John Hope Franklin Memorial Lecture, Adelphi University, March
29, 2009.
"Monk and Nellie: A Love Story", Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence Address, African
American Studies, Princeton University, March 10, 2009.
"Deepening Liberation: Challenging Racism, Sexism, Materialism, and Homophobia", Keynote
address, Black Male Summit, Denison University, February 21, 2009.
"Before Obama: How Black Folk Saved U. S. Democracy", Carl Ubbelohde Lecture, Case
Western Reserve University, October 16, 2008.
Confronting Obama: A Primer on Race and Empire for the Next U. S. President,” Distinguished
Lecture, Chicano Studies, Cal State Northridge, November 25, 2008.
“Speaking in Tongues: Jazz and Modern Africa,” A Common Wind: A Conference in Honor of
Julius Scott, III, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, November 14, 2008.
“Canaan's Children: Black Ohio's Revolutionary Legacy,” Keynote address, Race and
Resistance, 1858 and 2008: Activists and Allies, Oberlin College, November 7-8, 2008.
“Reconstruction of Power: Through Critical Education for Equity and Justice for All,” Urban
Forum, Keynote address, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, November 6, 2008.
“Before Obama: How Black Folk Saved U. S. Democracy,” Case Western Reserve, October 16,
2008.
Confronting Obama: A Primer on Race and Empire for the Next U. S. President,” Eqbal Ahmad
Memorial Lecture, Hampshire College, October 15, 2008
“Desegregation in National Context,” Keynote, Teachers Forum on Desegregating Pasadena
Schools, Pasadena Unified School District, June 3, 2008
“The African Invasion: Musical Encounters in the Age of Decolonization,” Keynote address,
Transnation: UCLA Annual Mellon Conference, May 30, 2008.
“Defying the Form: Thelonious Monk Meets Frank London Brown,” Guest Lecture, Modernism
and the Black Metropolis, Northwestern University, May 22, 2008.
“Looking Forward, Looking Back: Yo’ Mama’s Disfunktional! Fighting the Culture Wars in
Urban America Ten Years Later,” Keynote address, Who Claims the City?, Marquette University,
May 2, 2008.
“Race and Terror in the Work of Hank Willis Thomas,” Parkside Senior Commons, USC, April
10, 2008.
“Katrina and the Presidential Campaign,” University of Miami, April 2, 2008
“Thelonious Monk: Life and Times of an American Original,” Los Angeles Humanities Institute,
USC, December 14, 2007
“The ‘Un’ Years: Thelonious Monk in the 1950s,” Duke University, October 27, 2007
“Another Reconstruction?: Reparations in the Wake of Katrina,” Ralph Bunche Memorial
Lecture, UCLA, May 10, 2007.
“The Pursuit of Happyness: Notes on Success Narratives and Racial Violence,” Sarah Lawrence
College, April 24, 2007.
"Black and Tan Fantasies: Visualizing Race and Masculinity through the Dark Shades of Jazz,"
Moore Lecture Series on Black Masculinity, University of Oregon, April 16, 2007.
“Exploiting Jazz Musicians,” Humanities Institute, Distinguished Lecture Series, University of
Texas at Austin, April 11, 2007.
“Racializing Science: Reflections on Two Centuries,” Keynote address, Conference on Science,
Technology and the Historical Influence of Race, Drexel University, March 9, 2007.
“Histories of Black Popular Culture,” Johnson C. Smith University, March 8, 2007.
"Jazz Sahara: The Music of Ahmed Abdul-Malik," Distinguished Visiting Scholar (Lecture 1),
Washington University in St. Louis, February 28, 2007.
“The Education of Thelonious Monk,” Distinguished Visiting Scholar (Lecture 2), Washington
University in St. Louis, March 1, 2007.
“Visualizing Race: Three Episodes,” Keynote speaker, Eighth Annual American Studies
Conference, Macalaster College, February 19, 2007.
“A Joyful Noise: Radical Spirituality and Modern Jazz,” Distinguished Lecture, Lewis and Clark
College, February 13, 2007.
“‘Jazz and Freedom Go Hand in Hand!’: Thelonious Monk Plays the ‘60s,” Reed College,
February 12, 2007.
“Young Monk,” Faculty Research Forum, Mt. Holyoke College, April 25, 2006.
A. Wade Smith Memorial Lecture on Race Relations, “Another Reconstruction: Debating
Reparations and Race in Post-Katrina America,” Arizona State University, March 23, 2006.
“The Tree is Known by It’s Fruit”: Leadership and Activism in the 21st Century,” Student
Symposium/Lecture, Arizona State University, March 23, 2006.
Shirley Kennedy Memorial Lecture, “’Africa Speaks, America Answers’: The Drum Wars of Guy
Warren,” University of California, Santa Barbara, March 30, 2006.
Second Annual African American History Month Lecture, “The Education of Thelonious Monk,”
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, February 23, 2006.
Provost Lecture Series, “’Africa Speaks, America Answers’: The Drum Wars of Guy Warren,”
SUNY Binghamton, February 9, 2006.
“Monk’s Dance,” Philosophy on Stage, (Music and text performance/collaboration with Patrick
Pulsinger at Ovalhalle Museumsquartier), Vienna, Austria, November 10, 2005.
Addison Gayle Memorial Lecture, “The Education of Thelonious Monk,” Baruch College, New
York, November 3, 2005.
“’We Threaten the World’: African Americans and U.S. Empire,” American Studies Center of the
University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa, Japan, August 31, 2005.
“’A Joyful Noise’: Modern Jazz and Spirituality,” American Studies Center of the University of
the Ryukyus, Okinawa, Japan, September 2, 2005.
“It’s You: Next Wave of Attacks on Civil Liberties,” Keynote address, Charles H. Revson
Fellows Annual Dinner, Columbia University, New York City, May 3, 2005.
Russell B. Nye Lecture, “The Education of Thelonious Monk,” Michigan State University, March
31, 2005.
“’The Oppressed People of the Earth are the Majority,’” ” Keynote Address, American
Studies/Ethnic Studies, Conference at Williams College, March 11, 2005
“Monk’s Musical Journey,” Lecture presented, "In Celebration of William L. Dawson: An
Exploration of African-American Music and Identity at the Dawn of the 21st Century," Emory
University, Atlanta, GA, March 4, 2005.
Convocation Address, “’We Threaten the World’: Black Internationalism vs. U.S. Empire,”
Bowie State University, Maryland, February 8, 2005
“Teaching to Change the World,” Barnard College, October 28, 2004
“Liberating Memories: Social Movements and the Power of History,” Keynote address, ‘ When
History Wakes’: Cultural and Ecological Memory, Pacifica Graduate Institute, Santa Barbara,
Calif., October 16, 2004.
“Movement Building in the Bush Era,” Keynote Adress, CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities
Annual Dinner, St. Patrick’s Youth Center, New York, October 1, 2004.
Plenary Session, “Life After Capitalism,” CUNY Graduate Center, August 20, 2004.
“Teaching to Change the World,” keynote address, Center for Urban Education, Long Island
University, Brooklyn, May 1, 2004
“Historical Context for ‘Things of Dry Hours,’” Pittsburgh Public Theater, April 13, 2004. [Play
by MacArthur- genius grantee, Naomi Wallace, inspired by my first book, Hammer and Hoe.]
“Jazz Sahara: The Music of Ahmed Abdul-Malik,” ECHO Lecture, UCLA, April 7, 2004.
“Constructing the Past, Creating the Future: The Legacy of Nell Irvin Painter,” Keynote address
(conference the same title), Princeton University, April 2, 2004.
“When the Spirit Returns: Jazz and Modern Africa,” Ena H. Thompson Lectures [three lectures],
Pomona College, April 6, 8, 9, 2004
“Labor Against Empire, at Home and Abroad,” Keynote address, Race and Labor Matters, CUNY
Graduate Center, December 5, 2003.
“Jazz Folk Here and There: A Trans-Atlantic Conversation,” Inaugural HGSA Lecture,
University of Maryland, December 1, 2003.
“Marabi Modernists: Swinging Under Apartheid,” Nathan I. Huggins Lectures, Harvard
University, November 20, 2003
“Drum Wars: ‘Africa Speaks, America Answers,’” Nathan I. Huggins Lectures, Harvard
University, November 19, 2003
“’Uhuru Afrika’: Spiritual Strivings in the Age of Decolonization,” Nathan I. Huggins Lectures,
Harvard University, November 18, 2003
“Jazz and the Civil Rights Movement,” Walker Ames Lecture, University of Washington,
November 13, 2003
“Of Jazz and Freedom,” W.E.B. DuBois Distinguished Lecture, Miami University of Ohio,
October 7, 2003.
“What my Teachers Taught Me About Justice,” Commencement Address, College of Arts and
Sciences, California State University at Long Beach, May 29, 2003.
“Jazz Folk Here and There: A Trans-Atlantic Conversation,” St. Claire Drake Lecture, Stanford
University, May 23, 2003.
“Writing History to Change the World,” SUNY Albany, Phi Alpha Theta Distinguished Lecture,
April 4, 2003.
“Souls of Black Folk: A Centennial Celebration,” Dramatic reading of DuBois, Souls of Black
Folk, with Danny Glover, Phylicia Rashad and Jeffrey Wright, CUNY Graduate Center, April 7,
2003.
“Say It”: Towards a Politics of Love and the Marvelous,” Lecture, “Themes of Love and
Liberation in the History and Politics of Resistance Movements," Conference in Honor of Carol
Gilligan, NYU Law School, November 8, 2002.
“Freedom Dreams: Thoughts on the Black Radical Imagination,” Askwith Forum lecture series,
Harvard School of Education, September 23, 2002.
“More than a Paycheck,” Montgomery Lecture, Dartmouth College, July 23, 2002.
“A Day of Reckoning: Reparations as a Social Movement,” Rayford Logan Memorial Lecture,
Howard University, April 10, 2002.
“Writing History to Change the World,” Keynote, Phi Alpha Theta Induction, St. John’s
University, April 8, 2002.
“Dreaming as Intellectual Work,” Faculty Seminar, Brooklyn College, March 15, 2002.
“Thelonious Monk and Modern Jazz,” Performance/lecture with Salim Washington Ensemble,
Brooklyn College, March 14, 2002.
“Race and the American Labor Movement,” Lecture, Brooklyn College, March 14, 2002.
“Jazz and Freedom Go Hand in Hand,” Robert L. Hess Memorial Lecture, Brooklyn College,
March 13, 2002.
“The Globalization of African American History,” Lecture, School of Education, Brooklyn
College, March 12, 2002.
“This Battlefield Called Life: Black Feminist Dreams,” Women’s Studies/Women’s Center
Forum, Brooklyn College, March 12, 2002.
“Academia and Social Responsibility,” Lecture and discussion, Brooklyn College, March 11,
2002 [part of Robert L. Hess Residency]
“Day of Reckoning: Dreams of Reparations,” Lecture, Brooklyn College, March 11, 2002 [part of
Robert L. Hess Residency]
“Let Freedom Ring: Jazz and the Political Imagination,” Jazz and History Lecture, Center for Jazz
Studies, Columbia University, February 26, 2002
“W.E.B. DuBois and Reparations,” Plenary Session for The Color Line, Then and Now, New
York University, sponsored by the Brecht Forum, February 23, 2002.
“Criss Cross: Thelonious Monk and the Black Freedom Movement,” W.E.B. DuBois Lecture,
George Mason University, February 7, 2002
W.E.B. and Shirley Graham DuBois Lecture, “’A Day of Reckoning’: Dreams of Reparations,”
Colgate University, January 25, 2002.
“’Looking at Monk’: The Making of a Visual Icon,” Studio Museum of Harlem, New York,
October 11, 2001.
“New York Sounds: Towards a New Sonic History of Jazz,” Roundtable on Jazz in New York
City (with Albert Murray, Dan Morgenstern, Geoffrey Ward, and Gary Giddins), Gotham Center,
CUNY, April 26, 2001.
“People in Me: Beyond Multiculturalism,” Georgetown University, April 24, 2001.
“Freedom or Democracy?: What Humanists Can Learn from Jazz,” The Future of the Humanities,
Distinguished Lecture Series, Cleveland State University, April 13, 2001.
“Let Freedom Ring: Jazz and the Political Imagination,” Faculty Resource Network Anniversary,
Keynote Lecture, Spelman College, March 27, 2001.
“’Jazz and Freedom Go Hand in Hand’: Thelonious Monk Plays the Politics of the 1960s,” CAM
Lecture, New York Public Library, March 21, 2001.
“Freedom Dreams: Black Feminist Visions of Democracy,” Distinguished Lecture, Sara
Lawrence College, March 8, 2001.
“’Let’s Call This’: Thelonious Monk’s Challenge to Bebop,” Institute for Studies in American
Music, Brooklyn College, February 20, 2001
“’Jazz and Freedom Go Hand in Hand’: Thelonious Monk Plays the Politics of the 1960s,”
W.E.B. DuBois Lecture, George Mason University, February 7, 2001.
“Black and Tan Fantasies: Seeing Race Through the Dark Shades of Jazz,” Keynote address,
Visions of Race Conference, Cleveland Museum, February 3, 2001.
“In a Mist: Thoughts on Ken Burns’s ‘Jazz’” Brecht Forum, New York City, February 2, 2001.
“Work and Play,” Presentation as part of “Platform,” an Installation by Renee Green, Swiss
Institute, December 21, 2000.
“Making ‘To Make Our World Anew,’: Thoughts on a New African American History,” Program
in African American Studies, University of Pennsylvania, November 28, 2000.
“Without a Song: The Musicians Strike of 1935-36 and the Problem of the “Laboring Artist,”
Keynote address, North American Labor History Conference, Wayne State University, Detroit,
October 19, 2000.
“Dreaming,” Distinguished Lecture Series in Labor History, University of Wisconsin, Green Bay,
October 5, 2000.
“‘Criss Cross’: Thelonious Monk Plays the Politics of the 1960s,” Symposium, Newport Jazz
Festival, Newport, Rhode Island, August 9, 2000.
“’Criss Cross’: Thelonious Monk Plays the Politics of the 1960s,” Montgomery Lecture,
Dartmouth College, July 19, 2000.
“Oral History and the Jazz Narrative: Re-thinking Thelonious Monk and Bebop’s Origins,”
Annual Oral History Lecture, UCLA Oral History Program, May 23, 2000.
“Lessons from the Alabama Communists,” Atlanta Book Club, Project South [grassroots
organization], Atlanta, May 11, 2000.
“Criss Cross: Thelonious Monk and the Politics of the Avant-Garde,” Center for Jazz Studies
symposium, Columbia University, May 5-6, 2000.
“Reparations and the Labor Movement,” Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, Midwest Regional
Meeting, Minneapolis, April 29, 2000.
“Adrienne Kennedy’s Surrealist Vision,” Symposium on Adrienne Kennedy, Macalaster College,
April 29, 2000.
“Building Bridges: The Challenges of Communities of Color to Labor,” Keynote lecture, Labor
History Month, Macalaster College, April 28, 2000.
“How the West was One: On the Uses and Limitations of Diaspora,” Transcending Traditions,
conference on the African Diaspora sponsored by the African Studies Center, University of
Pennsylvania, April 20, 2000.
“’Let’s Call This’: Thelonious Monk and the Myth of Bebop’s Origins,” Carnegie Mellon
University, April 14, 2000.
“When History Sleeps: Discovering the Marvelous in the Dreams of the Exploited (circa
1700-2000),” E. P. Thompson Lecture, University of Pittsburgh, April 13, 2000.
“Building Coalitions,” Plenary Session, Socialist Scholars Conference, New York City, March
31, 2000.
“’Let’s Call This’: Thelonious Monk’s Challenge to Bebop,” Center for Jazz Studies, Lecture
Series, Columbia University, March 28, 2000.
“Culture as a Space for Dreaming,” Distinguished Lecture in Cultural Studies, Penn State
University, March 23, 2000.
Conscience or Consciousness?: Lessons from the Black Freedom Movement,” University-wide
Lecture Series on “Conscience,” March 15, 2000.
“People in Me: Dancing to the Polycultural Rhythms of Blackness,” Race and Identity Lecture
Series, Long Island University, March 9, 2000.
“Dreaming: The Poetics and Politics of Black Social Movements,” Distinguished Lecture,
University of Connecticut, February 24, 2000.
“Ark-Illogically Speaking: Recovering Hip Hop’s Blutopian Vision,” Distinguished Lecture on
Race and Ethnicity, University of Rhode Island, February 9, 2000.
“Politics and Knowledge: On the Poetry of Social Movements,” Martin Luther King, Jr.,
Distinguished Lecture, Dartmouth College, January 17, 2000.
“Unfinished Migrations: Rethinking the African Diaspora,” Black Atlantic Faculty Seminar,
Rutgers University, December 9, 1999.
“Misterioso,” Tonic, November 8, 1999 [“Thermodynamic” reading with pianist Craig Taborn,
lower east side club.]
“Social Justice/Social Movements,” Forum on Mumia Abu-Jamal (with Farah Jasmine Griffin),
Princeton University, September 23, 1999.
Series of lectures on American and African American History, USIA Visiting Scholar, Bogazaci
University, Istanbul, Turkey, May 22-30, 1999.
“The Problem with Vouchers,” Black Educational Forum, Sponsored by the Black Radical
Congress, City College, New York, May 15, 1999.
“Misterioso: In Search of Thelonious Monk,” American Studies Forum, City University of New
York, April 29, 1999.
“‘An Appeal to the Coloured World’: Black History’s Global Vision,” Alton Hornsby, Jr.,
Distinguished Lecture, Morehouse College, March 25, 1999.
“Traditions of Resistance: Women and Public Sector Unionism,” Women’s History Month
Lecture, DC-37 Social Service Workers Local, New York, March 10, 1999.
“Dreaming,” Plenary Session for ‘Intellectuals and Activism: A Conference,’ New York
University, March 5, 1999.
“New Monastery: Monk and Free Jazz,” Comparative Studies in Social Transformation,
University of Michigan, February 25, 1999.
“Ugly Beauty: The Music of Thelonious Monk,” Program in American Culture, University of
Michigan, February 24, 1999
“Black Like Mao: Red China and Black Liberation,” Sociology Department, University of
Michigan, February 24, 1999.
“Building Bridges: The Challenge of Organized Labor in Communities of Color,” Aspen
Institute, Roundtable on Comprehensive Community Initiatives, November 1998.
“What Is the Black Radical Tradition?” Keynote lecture, ‘Afric’s Sons and Daughters with
Banner Red’: Re-Thinking Black Radicalism, Temple University, October 24, 1998.
“‘It’s Always Night’: Surrealism and the Black World,” Sonya Stone Memorial Lecture,
University of North Carolina, September 22, 1998.
“How the West was One: Reflections on Internationalization African American History,” Center
for Historical Research, Amsterdam, Holland, June 25-26, 1998 and Cambridge University, June
29, 1998.
“Misterioso: In Search of Thelonious Monk,” and “New Monastery: Monk and the Jazz Avant
Garde,” University of California at San Diego, May 7, 1998.
“New Directions,” Plenary Session, Founding Convention of Scholars, Artists, Writers for Social
Justice (SAWSJ), April 24, 1998.
“Ugly Beauty: Reading Monk’s Music,” University of California at Santa Cruz, April 14, 1998.
with Farah Jasmine Griffin, “Thelonious Monk and Billie Holiday: Rethinking Biography
and African American Studies,” DuBois Dialogue Series, Center for Black Literature and
Culture, University of Pennsylvania, March 20, 1998.
“New Monastery: Thelonious Monk and Free Jazz,” North Carolina Jazz Festival, University of
North Carolina, February 27, 1998.
“Misterioso: In Search of Thelonious Monk,” Distinguished Lecture Series, Afro-American
Studies, Claremont Colleges, February 2, 1998.
“There are No Coons Here,” Symposium on the Opera Amistad, Lyric Opera, Chicago,
December 29, 1997.
“People in Me: On the Polycultural Nature of Blackness,” Distinguished Lecture Series,
University of Texas at Austin, December 4, 1997.
Misterioso: In Search of Thelonious Monk,” W.E.B. DuBois Distinguished Lecture in African
American Studies, Wesleyan University, April 22, 1997
“Ugly Beauty: Thelonious Monk and the Postwar Avant Garde,” Postwar History Seminar,
Princeton University, December 1, 1997
“How the West was One: On the Limits and Possibilities of Diaspora,” Inaugural Keynote lecture,
Black Atlantic Project, Rutgers University, September 30, 1997.
“Thelonious Monk and Postwar Visual Culture,” Fine Arts Faculty Seminar, University of
Melbourne, August 14, 1997.
“Black Like Mao: Red China and Black Revolution,” History Department Faculty Seminar,
University of Melbourne, August 21, 1997.
“Neo-cons of the Black Nation: Beyond Self-Help,” Distinguished Martin Luther King, Jr..
speaker, Sarah Lawrence College, February 22, 1996.
“Looking B(l)ackward: Notes on the Future of African American Studies,” Medgar Evers
College, Brooklyn, New York, February 20, 1997.
“The Black Freedom Movement, 1900-1954,” African Educational Forum, Yonkers, New York,
February 16, 1997.
“Playing for Keeps: African American Youth in the Postindustrial City,” annual Marion Wright
Thompson Lecture, Rutgers University, Newark Campus, February 15, 1997.
“Critical Black History,” Brecht Forum, New York City, February 7, 1997.
“All Aboard the Enlightenment Train” Teach-In on the U.S. Labor Movement, Columbia
University, October 3, 1996; also presented at CUNY Graduate Center, November 18, 1996.
“The Black Liberation Movement and the Left: A Historical Perspective,” Labor/Community
Strategy Center, Los Angeles, California, July 18, 1996.
“The Black Liberation Movement and the Left--A Mini-Course,” Labor/Community Strategy
Center, Los Angeles, California, July 19-28, 1996. Four lectures: I. Slavery, Colonialism, and the
Making of the Black Working Class; II. Black Revolt in the Age of Empire, 1877-1919; III.
Garvey’s Ghost: Black Internationalism and the National-Colonial Question, 1919-1939; IV.
Black Liberation Movements and the New World Order, 1939-1968; V. To the Plants: Black
Liberation and the Party Building Movement, 1970s to Present
“Re-Building the Left in the Age of Global Capital,” Series of Lectures and Seminars at the Labor
Community Strategy Center, Organizers School, July 18-30, 1996.
“Labor Wars/Culture Wars: Why Culture and Community Struggles Matter,” Labor Resource
Center, Queens College, June 21, 1996.
“How Marxist Commitment is Developed and Sustained,” Forum for 60th Anniversary of Science
and Society, Brecht Forum, May 4, 1996
“Renewing the Labor Press,” Metro Labor Press Council, Annual Meeting, May 3, 1996.
“Straight from the Underground: Music and Politics from Soul to Hip Hop,” Community Youth
Center, Schenectady, April 25, 1996.
“Labor and the Culture Wars,” Socialist School, New Directions, Stony Point, New Jersey, March
29, 1996.
“Universities and Unions: Toward an Historical Perspective,” Graduate Employees Organization
Forum, Yale University, February 29, 1996.
“The Impact of Globalization on the U.S. Working Class,” presented at “The Future of the U.S.
Working Class,” Committees of Correspondence, Labor Committee, New York City, November
18, 1995.
“Looking B(l)ackward,” Allison Davis Lecture, Northwestern University, October 22, 1995.
“The Incarceration of Civil Society,” Safe Communities: Toward A Comprehensive Urban
Agenda, Penn Center, Helena Island, South Carolina, October 5-8, 1995.
“Emmett Till in the Context of Cold War America,” presented at “America’s Darker Moments:
Reflections,” Yale University, September 23, 1995.
“The Assault on Affirmative Action,” Forum on affirmative action sponsored by the International
Socialist Organization, CUNY Grad Center, August 9, 1995.
“The Meaning of ‘Race Rebels’ in the Current Crisis,” House of the Lord Church, Lecture
sponsored by the National Association of Black Journalists, July 22, 1995.
“Third Grade, You’re Out!: How the Erosion of Civil Society and the Expansion of the Criminal
Justice System undermines Black Youth,” Black Student Leadership Network and Children’s
Defense Fund Retreat, Haley Farm, Tennessee, July 8, 1995.
“Historical Reflections on the Problems of Community Building in the Modern City,” presented
at “The American City,” conference sponsored by the National Humanities Center, Research
Triangle, North Carolina, April 22-25, 1995.
“The Critics Dilemma: Notes on the History of the Lincoln Brigade,” Socialist Scholars
Conference, New York City, April 9, 1995.
“The Uprising of ‘34: Memory/History/Silence,” New York University, March 21, 1995.
"Looking B(l)ackward: African-American Studies in the Age of Identity Politics," Keynote
Lecture, delivered at "The Negro Problem, 1895-1995," Princeton University, March 3, 1995.
The House Negro Within: Malcolm X and the Black Bourgeoisie,” The Dale Somers Memorial
Lecture, Georgia State University, November 17, 1994; Martin Luther King Day Lecture,
University of Michigan, January 16, 1995; Black History Month Lecture, Fordham University,
February 28, 1996.
"I've Got a Lumpen in My Throat: Thinking about the Black Working Class in the late 20th
Century," Faculty Seminar, Georgia State University, November 17, 1994.
'Yo Mama's Disfunktional!': Black Urban Culture and the Predicament of Social Science,"
Distinguished Lecture Series, sponsored by the Afro-American Studies Program, Duke
University, November 9, 1994.
"Nap Time Reading: Narrating the Afro," Hairpiece: Roundtable Discussion on Black Hair,
American Studies Association, Nashville, Tenn., October 27-30, 1994.
"Pleasure and Profit on the Playground: Toward a Political Economy of Play on the Urban
Terrain," presented at "Race Matters: Black Americans and the U.S. Terrain," Princeton
University, April 29-30, 1994.
"'Check the Technique': Black Urban Culture and the Predicament of Social Science," W.E.B.
DuBois Distinguished Lecture, City University New York, April 26, 1994. Also presented at
presented at "Reconfiguring the Culture Concept," Comparative Studies in Social Transformation,
University of Michigan, October 3, 1993; Yale University, American Studies Program, February
18, 1994
"Black Youth Culture: The View from the Academy," keynote address, "Ego Trippin': The
Cultural Politics of Rap and Hip Hop," conference held at University of Maryland, College Park,
February 24-25, 1994.
"Writing Black Working Class History in the Present," presented at "Working in a Multicultural
Society," Conference held at the University of Michigan, November 13-14, 1993.
"Chocolate Cities: The Black Working Class and the Transformation of Urban America," Benefit
for Proctor-Niebyl Library, Berkeley, California, September 26, 1993.
"What If Jack Sheppard and Malcolm Little Met in Los Angeles in 1992?" Paper Presented at a
Roundtable Discussion on Peter Linebaugh, The London Hanged and David Roediger, The Wages
of Whiteness, Organization of American Historians Meeting, Anaheim, California, April 16, 1993.
"African Americans and the CIO in the South," Wayne State University, March 5, 1993.
"The Black Radical Tradition in History," DePaul University and Malcolm X College, Chicago,
February 22, 1993.
"Culture, Politics, and Working Class Resistance," Black Men in Unions Annual Meeting,
Detroit, Michigan, February 18, 1993.
"African Americans in the Spanish Civil War," Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, West
Coast Branch Annual Banquet, Oakland, California, February 14, 1993.
"Lessons of a Crook: The Politics of Malcolm Little as Criminal and Inmate," Lecture delivered
to Boysville Detention Center, Saline Michigan, February 8, 1993.
"Congested Terrain: Gender, Race, Space and Resistance on Public Transportation in
Birmingham, Alabama, 1941-1945," Department of Sociology, University of Michigan, January
1993.
"The Cultural Politics of Young Malcolm Little," Lorraine Williams Memorial Lecture, Howard
University, October 1, 1992
"'This Ain't Ethiopia, But It'll Do': African-Americans in the Lincoln Battalion," Oliver Law
Scholarship Fund-raiser, Wayne State University, May 1, 1992
"Re-Thinking Black Working-Class Opposition in the Jim Crow South," presented at "Race,
Class, and Gender: Re-Working American Labor History," University of Wisconsin, Madison,
April 9, 1992.
"The Body Politics of the P.C. Debate," Organization of American Historians, Chicago, April 4,
1992
"The Forgotten Struggle: Birmingham's Black Poor in the Age of Civil Rights," University of
North Carolina, Greensboro, March 19, 1992
"The Riddle of the Zoot: Malcolm Little and Black Cultural Politics During World War II,"
Seminar on Race and Racism, University of Chicago, February 14, 1992; also presented at
University of Missouri, Columbia, February 18, 1992
"'A Bird in the Hand': The Political Economy of Crack Cocaine in the Period of Flexible
Accumulation," presented at University of Missouri, Columbia, February 18, 1992
"From Bebop to Hip Hop: the Politics of Music," Lecture delivered to Boysville Detention
Center, Saline Michigan, February 11, 1992.