Robin D.G. Kelley

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Robin D.G. Kelley (b. 1962) is currently a professor of history and American studies and ethnicity at the University of Southern California. From 2003-2006, he was the William B. Ransford Professor of Cultural and Historical Studies at Columbia University. From 1994-2003, he was a professor of history and Africana Studies at New York University as well the chairman of NYU's history department from 2002-2003. Robin Kelley has also served as a Hess Scholar-in-Residence at Brooklyn College.

He began his career as a professor at Southeastern Massachusetts University, Emory University, and the University of Michigan before moving on to a full-time professorship at NYU, where he taught courses on U.S. history, African-American history, and popular culture.

One of the youngest tenured professors in a full academic discipline-at the age of 32-Kelley has spent most of his career exploring American and African-American history from a Marxist perspective, with a particular emphasis on the political dynamics at work within African-American musical culture, including hip-hop, jazz, and be-bop.

Notwithstanding his Marxian view of economic and political issues, Kelley has eschewed a doctrinaire Marxist approach to aesthethics and culture, preferring instead a modified surrealist approach. He has described himself in the past as a "Marxist surrealist feminist who is not just anti something but pro-emancipation, pro-liberation." [1]

Robin Kelley earned his Bachelor's Degree from California State University, Long Beach in 1983. By 1987 he had earned his Master's in African history and doctorate in U.S. history from UCLA.

He has published several books focusing upon African-American history and culture as well as race relations, including Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class, and Yo' Mama's DisFunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America. Kelley is also a prolific essayist, having published dozens of articles in scholarly journals, anthologies, and in the popular press, including the Village Voice and the New York Times.

He is currently finishing a biography of jazz musician Thelonious Monk expected to be completed by late 2006. Kelley has been working for years with Monk Institute founder Thelonious Monk Jr., who has granted Kelley access to rare historical documents for his biography. No other scholar has ever had such access and support from the Monk family. Kelley is also working on two other books: Speaking in Tongues: Jazz and Modern Africa and A World to Gain: A History of African Americans.

[edit] Bibliography

-Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression (University of North Carolina Press, 1990)

--Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class (The Free Press, 1994)

-Into the Fire: African Americans Since 1970 (Oxford University Press, 1996)

-Yo' Mama's DisFunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America (Beacon Press, 1997)

-Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (Publisher: Beacon Press; 1 edition (June 15, 2003)

[edit] External links

• Acclaimed Cultural Historian Robin D.G. Kelley Comes to Brooklyn College as Hess Scholar-in-Residence
• Columbia U. Snares NYU's Robin D.G. Kelley
• Robin D.G. Kelley, Leading African-American Studies Historian, Joins Columbia
• Robin D.G. Kelley lecture on Monk to anchor Black History Month event
• "But a Local Phase of a World Problem": Black History's Global Vision, 1883-1950
• Robin Kelley brings grass-roots movements to history’s grand narrative
• Dr. Robin D. G. Kelley "Multiculturalism and the Global Youth Culture"
• Social Justice Wiki
• Race-The Power of an Illusion. Interview with Robin D.G. Kelley.
• Renowned Scholar Joins USC College