Robin D. G. Kelley
Kelley in a 2014 interview
Born	Robin Davis Gibran Kelley (1962-03-14)March 14, 1962 (age 63) New York City, US
Occupation	Historian and academic
Alma mater	California State University, Long Beach (BA) University of California, Los Angeles (MA,PhD)
Genre	History
Employer	UCLA
Notable works	Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class (1994)

Robin Davis Gibran Kelley (born March 14, 1962)^[1] is an American historian and academic, who is the Gary B. Nash Professor of American History at theUniversity of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).^[2][3]

From 2006 to 2011, he was Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at theUniversity of Southern California (USC),^[4] and from 2003 to 2006 he was the William B. Ransford Professor of Cultural and Historical Studies atColumbia University. From 1994 to 2003, he was a professor of history andAfricana Studies atNew York University (NYU) as well the chair of NYU's history department from 2002 to 2003.^[5] Kelley has also served as a Hess Scholar-in-Residence atBrooklyn College. In the summer of 2000, he was honored as a Montgomery Fellow atDartmouth College, where he taught and mentored a class of sophomores, as well as wrote the majority of the bookFreedom Dreams.

During the academic year 2009–10, Kelley served asHarold Vyvyan Harmsworth Professor of American History atOxford University,^[6] the first African-American historian to do so since the chair was established in 1922. He was awarded theGuggenheim Fellowship in 2014.^[7] He is also the author of a 2009 biography ofThelonious Monk.

Kelley has described himself as aMarxistSurrealistfeminist.^[8]

Born inNew York City, Kelley earned hisbachelor's degree fromCalifornia State University, Long Beach, in 1983. By 1987 he had earned amaster's in African history anddoctorate in U.S. history fromUCLA.^[9]

After earning his doctorate, he began his career as an assistant professor atSoutheastern Massachusetts University, then toEmory University, and theUniversity of Michigan, where he was promoted to associate professor with tenure. He later moved to the Department of History at New York University (NYU), where he was promoted to the rank of professor and taught courses on U.S. history, African-American history, and popular culture. At the age of 32, he was the youngest full professor at NYU.^[9] He is a Distinguished Fellow of theRothermere American Institute at theUniversity of Oxford.

Kelley has spent most of his career exploring American and African-American history, with a particular emphasis on radical social movements and the political dynamics at work within African-American culture, includingjazz,hip-hop, and visual arts.^[10][11][12]

Although influenced byMarxism, Kelley has eschewed a doctrinaire Marxist approach to aesthetics and culture, preferring a modifiedsurrealist approach. He has described himself in the past as a "Marxist surrealistfeminist who is not just anti something but pro-emancipation, pro-liberation."^[8]

Kelley has also used the concept ofracial capitalism in his work.^[13]

Kelley has written several books focusing on African-American history and culture as well as race relations, includingRace Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class (1994),Yo' Mama's DisFunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America (1997), andFreedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (2002). He is also a prolific essayist, having published dozens of articles in scholarly journals, anthologies, and in the popular press, including theVillage Voice,Boston Review, andThe New York Times.

His bookThelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (Free Press, 2009), received several honors, including Best Book on Jazz from theJazz Journalists Association and the Ambassador Award for Book of Special Distinction from theEnglish-Speaking Union. It also received thePEN Open Book Award. The family ofThelonious Monk, notably his sonT. S. Monk, granted Kelley access to rare historical documents for his biography.

Kelley's 2012 book,Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times (2012), explores the relationship between jazz and Africa in the era ofdecolonization andCivil Rights. His works in progress includeA World to Gain: A History of African Americans, withEarl Lewis andTera Hunter, and a biography of journalist and adventurerGrace Halsell.^[14][15]

• Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990)
• Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class (New York: The Free Press, 1994)
• Co-edited with Sidney J. Lemelle,Imagining Home: Class, Culture, and Nationalism in the African Diaspora (London: Verso Books, 1995).
• Into the Fire: African Americans Since 1970 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996)
• Yo' Mama's DisFunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America (Boston: Beacon Press, 1997)
• Co-written withHoward Zinn and Dana Frank,Three Strikes: The Fighting Spirit of Labor's Last Century (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001)
• Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (Boston: Beacon Press, 2002). Revised and expanded for a 20th anniversary edition in 2022.^[16]
• Co-edited withEarl Lewis,To Make Our World Anew: A History of African Americans (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). Two-volume edition, 2004.
• Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (New York: The Free Press, 2009)
• Co-edited withFranklin Rosemont,Surrealism - Black, Brown and Beige: Writings and Images from Africa and the African Diaspora (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2009)
• Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012)
• Co-edited withStephen Tuck,The Other Special Relationship: Race, Rights and Riots in Britain and the United States (New York: Palgrave, 2015)
• Co-edited with Jesse Benjamin,Walter Rodney, The Russian Revolution: A View From the Third World (New York: Verso, 2018)

Wikiquote has quotations related toRobin D. G. Kelley.

• UCLA faculty page.
• "Profile of Robin D.G. Kelley",Stanford Report, July 29, 1998.
• "Race – The Power of an Illusion". Interview with Robin D. G. Kelley, PBS, 2003.
• Dr. Robin D. G. Kelley,"Multiculturalism and the Global Youth Culture", February 9, 2004.
• Benjamin Holtzman,"An Interview with Robin D.G. Kelley",In the Middle of a Whirlwind, April 21, 2008.
• Robin Kelley,"Ain't But a Few of Us: Black jazz writers tell their story #9",Open Sky Jazz, September 17, 2009.
• Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original. Website advertising the book.
• A New Look At An American Original,Fresh Air, interview byTerry Gross, December 8, 2009.
• Appearances onC-SPAN

• 1962 births
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