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Historian and author Robin Kelley left the ivy league and New York City behind to join the USC College faculty and live in Los Angeles.
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Renowned Scholar Joins USC College
Historian and author Robin Kelley comes to USC from Columbia University
By Kirsten Holguin
March 2006
Regarded as one of the country’s preeminent scholars in African
American history, Robin D.G. Kelley will join the faculty of USC
College July 1. He will hold a joint appointment as a professor of
history and American studies and ethnicity.
Recruited to USC College as part of the Senior Faculty Hiring
Initiative, a drive to bring 100 leading senior-level scholars to USC,
Kelley most recently was the William B. Ransford Professor of Cultural
and Historical Studies at Columbia University.
“Robin Kelley’s imaginative and forceful brand of history has provided
inspiration to almost a generation of graduate students and established
scholars,” said Joseph Aoun, dean of USC College. “Students in the
College will benefit from his enthusiasm for teaching and his depth of
knowledge.”
Kelley said he looks forward to joining the College faculty and working
with colleagues in the history department and the Program in American
Studies and Ethnicity (PASE).
“USC is a premier institution and the level of scholarship taking place
is on par with the top research universities in the country,” said
Kelley, who will be on leave in 2006–07 completing a book. “By bringing
African American, Asian American and Latino studies under the umbrella
of American studies, PASE is the best ethnic studies program in the
nation right now.”
Kelley earned his M.A. in African history and Ph.D. in U.S. history
from UCLA. Prior to his position at Columbia, he was chair of the
history department and professor of history and Africana studies at New
York University. At the University of Michigan, Kelley was a professor
of history, African American studies and American culture.
At the age of 32, Kelley became one of the youngest full professors in
the United States. At that time, he had written numerous articles as
well as the book Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression (University of North Carolina Press, 1990) and the collection of essays Race Rebels: Culture, Politics and the Black Working Class (The Free Press, 1994).
In Hammer and Hoe, Kelley’s
archival research and first-person interviews revealed that thousands
of sharecroppers and other non-elites took part in the Sharecropper’s
Union and the Communist Party in Alabama in the 1920s and 1930s.
Kelley’s accessible writing style brought attention to his first book
from a non-academic audience. That was intentional, he said, primarily
because he wanted those interviewed for the book to be able to read it.
With almost 150 pages of footnotes, savvy readers will notice most of
the theory in Hammer and Hoe is hidden or not mentioned at all.
Throughout his career, Kelley has continued to make his writing
accessible to a wide audience. He has written seven books and more than
100 essays, editorials and book reviews. During his time at Michigan,
Kelley appeared in mainstream publications including The Nation, Village Voice, The New York Times and New York Newsday.
Combining his academic credentials with personal ties to Los Angeles —
he lived in Los Angeles for 10 years during high school, college and
graduate school — Kelley has a deeper understanding of the city than
many people living inside or outside of Los Angeles.
The first piece he submitted to The Nation
was after the 1992 L.A. rebellion. The article was about hip hop and
what it could teach people about the construction of Los Angeles.
Kelley’s voice provided a unique perspective, and those first few articles yielded invitations from a number of publications.
“For me, writing those pieces was never about publicity, it really was
about trying to make some sharp critical interventions,” he said.
Kelley’s broad research interests include labor history, African
American studies, popular culture, the African Diaspora and jazz music.
“His frameworks for researching the interrelationships of labor,
capital, race and place integrate popular culture with institutional
structure and social stricture,” said Ruthie Gilmore, director of the
USC Program in American Studies and Ethnicity. “Robin has an eye for
archives, an ear for sound and an engaged sensibility that mixes
original interpretations of the past with advocacy for the present.”
In recent years, Kelley focused his research on jazz music. He is
currently completing work on a biography of Thelonious Monk, who is
recognized as one of the most dominant musicians in the history of
jazz. The Thelonious Monk Institute is housed at the USC Thornton
School of Music.
“The opportunity to work with the Thelonious Monk Institute is like a
dream come true,” Kelley said. “It is the leading program in jazz
education in the country, and it attracts some of the world’s leading
jazz musicians as teachers.”
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 believes his book will come as a surprise to many Monk fans who
only think of the musician in terms of his eccentricities. He hopes to
have the book completed later this year.
In addition, Kelley is working on two other books: Speaking in Tongues: Jazz and Modern Africa and A World to Gain: A History of African Americans.
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