Robin D. G. Kelley: “American Studies (Still) in a Moment of Danger”
This talk returns to and builds off George Lipsitz’s book, American Studies in a Moment of Danger, to reflect on the question, "What do we do now?" It considers how fields like American Studies face an existential threat not just from the university but from the state. What does it mean to do American Studies when it might be pressured back into its original project to center “America”? Instead, how can American Studies and related interdisciplinary fields, like Ethnic Studies and Gender Studies, be part of our toolkit to resist fascism and the many challenges of our present moment?
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); Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class (Free Press, 1994); Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times (Harvard University Press, 2012); with Howard Zinn and Dana Frank, Three Strikes: The Fighting Spirit of Labor’s Last Century (Beacon Press, 2001); Into the Fire: African Americans Since 1970 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).
He is currently completing two books, Making a Killing: Cops, Capitalism, and the War on Black Life (Henry Holt, 2026) The Education of Ms. Grace Halsell: An Intimate History of the American Century (in progress, Henry Holt).
He is also co-editor of the following books: Our History Has Always Been Contraband: In Defense of Black Studies (Colin Kaepernick and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor) (Haymarket Books, 2023); Walter Rodney, The Russian Revolution: A View From the Third World (with Jesse Benjamin) (Verso, 2018); The Other Special Relationship: Race, Rights and Riots in Britain and the United States (with Stephen Tuck) (Palgrave, 2015); Black, Brown and Beige: Surrealist Writings from Africa and the African Diaspora (with Franklin Rosemont) (University of Texas Press, 2009); To Make Our World Anew: A History of African Americans (with Earl Lewis) (Oxford University Press, 2000); Imagining Home: Class, Culture, and Nationalism in the African Diaspora (with Sidney J. Lemelle) (Verso Books, 1995); and the eleven volume Young Oxford History of African Americans (with Earl Lewis) (1995-1998).
This event is co-sponsored by the Africana Studies Department, American Indian Studies Program, Asian and Asian American Studies Department, Chicano and Latino Studies Department, Sociology Department, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department, CLA Scholarly Intersections, and the California American Studies Association.
