Scholar-Activist to speak on multiculturalism
and global youth culture at URI

KINGSTON, R.I. -- January 25, 2000 -- Robin D. G. Kelley, professor of history and Africana studies at New York University and well-known scholar-activist, will give a public lecture on multiculturalism at the University of Rhode Island.

Kelley's talk "Multiculturalism and Global Youth Culture" will be in Edwards Auditorium on URI's Kingston Campus on Feb. 9 at 7:30 p.m. The lecture is free. Anyone curious about cultural studies, popular culture, youth culture, jazz and hip-hop music, African-American studies, and urban poverty will be especially interested in this presentation.

"Professor Kelley is one of the nation's foremost scholars in interpreting and mediating Hip Hop and related youth cultures to academia, and vice versa," said Melvin Wade, director of URI's Mutlicultural Center.

Kelley is the author of the prize-winning books Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression and Race Rebels: Culture Politics and the Black Working Class. Kelley's most recent book, Yo' Mama's DisFunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America, was selected as one of the top 10 books of 1998 by the Village Voice. He is also the co-author with Sidney J. Lemelle of Imagining Home: Class, Culture and Nationalism in the African Diaspora; and general editor with Earl Lewis of the 11 volume Young Oxford History of African Americans.

Two other books, Misterioso: In Search of Thelonious Monk and a general history of African Americans in collaboration with authors Tera Hunter and Earl Lewis, are currently in the works.

Kelley has published numerous articles dealing with black urban poor, Malcolm X, oral history, South African radicalism, cultural studies, Pan-Africanism, jazz, and rap music. His articles have appeared in such anthologies and journals as The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, Monthly Review, One World, ColorLines, Journal of American History, Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noir, The American Historical Review, New York Newsday, New York Daily Challenge, Boston Review, and Radical History Review.

Kelley serves on the board of directors for the New York State Council for the Humanities and is a member of the Society of American Historians, National Historical Publications and Records Commission, the Organization of American Historians, and the Center for Black Music Research.

He has won numerous awards, including the ABC CLIO Award for Best Scholarly Article that Advances the Field of U.S. History from the Organization of American Historians, the National Conference of Black Political Scientists Outstanding Book Award, the Elliot Rudwick Prize from the Organization of American Historians, co-winner of Francis Butler Simkins Award from the Southern Historical Association, and Outstanding Book on Human Rights from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights in the U.S. He has held fellowships from various colleges and universities, including the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences of Stanford University, and the American Studies Program at the University of Melbourne, Australia.

This lecture is the second presented this academic year on multiculturalism organized by the Multicultural Center. For more information on the lecture or to make special arrangements call 874-2851.

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For More Information: Jan Sawyer, 401-874-2116