The Simpson Center presents this public colloquium in conjunction with Robin D. G. Kelley’s Katz Distinguished Lecture, “What Is Racial Capitalism and Why Does It Matter?” (7 pm, Tuesday, November 7, in Kane Hall 210, registration closed). The colloquium is an opportunity for informal discussion and exchange. Kelley invites attendees to review three readings from a manuscript of Walter Rodney’s lectures on the Russian Revolution, which were prepared and delivered while he was writing How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972).

Robin D. G. Kelley is Distinguished Professor and Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in US History at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times (2012), Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (2009), and Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (2002). His research has explored the history of social movements in the US, the African Diaspora, and Africa; black intellectuals; music; visual culture; contemporary urban studies; historiography and historical theory; poverty studies and ethnography; colonialism/imperialism; organized labor; constructions of race; Surrealism, Marxism, nationalism, among other things.

Kelley’s visit is part of “Capitalism and Comparative Racialization,” a 2017-2018 John E. Sawyer Seminar on the Comparative Study of Cultures funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.