^{9th Annual} Unity Through Diversity Forum

Keynoted by Robin D. G. Kelley

DATE:  Thursday, April 16, 6-7:30pm, with reception dinner to follow

LOCATION: Divinity School, Room 016, Duke University West Campus.  Directions and Parking Info Here.

Join fellow students, staff, and community members to critically explore the implications of the shift of discourses from anti-racism and liberatory politics to discourses of multiculturalism and diversity.  What current and historical experiences do "color-blind" and "post-racial" discourses obscure or reveal? How is race talked about today in the university context and beyond, and what kind of impact do these discourses have on the work we do? 

 

About Robin D. G. Kelley:

Robin D. G. Kelley is Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. He is the author of the prize-winning books:

• 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);
  
• Yo’ Mama’s DisFunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America (Beacon Press, 1997), which was selected one of the top ten books of 1998 by the Village Voice;
  
• Three Strikes: Miners, Musicians, Salesgirls, and the Fighting Spirit of Labor’s Last Century, written collaboratively with Dana Frank and Howard Zinn (Beacon 2001); and
  
• Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (Beacon Press, 2002).
  

Kelley's research topics have ranged widely, covering the history of black radical movements in the U.S., the African Diaspora, and Africa (notably South Africa); black intellectuals; music; visual culture; contemporary urban studies; poverty studies and ethnography; colonialism/imperialism; organized labor; constructions of race; Surrealism, Marxism, nationalism, among other things. More recently, my work has focused on culture and the politics of art, primarily with regard to the history of jazz and related musical forms.  Kelley is currently completing three book-length studies: a biography of pianist/composer Thelonious Monk, a small book about jazz and Modern Africa in the age of decolonization, and a general narrative of African American history in a global context (co-authored with Tera Hunter and Earl Lewis).