Student Activism: A Reckoning in the Archives with Robin D.G. Kelley

Robin D.G. Kelley delivers the opening keynote for Student Activism: A Reckoning in the Archives, a week-long, in-person residency that brings together student activists/organizers, information professionals, memory workers, scholars, historians and professors committed to the ethical documentation of student activism in historically marginalized communities. The residency aims to foster dialogue about the politics of archiving student activism amidst competing institutional interests in activist-generated materials, whether to surveil and contain dissent or to commemorate and mobilize activist legacies.

This talk is open to all, with RSVP required. Registration to open in early April.

Robin D. G. Kelley is Distinguished Professor and Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History at UCLA. His books include Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination; Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression; Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class; Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, and (forthcoming) Making a Killing: Capitalism, Cops, and the War on Black Life. He also co-edited (with Colin Kaepernick and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor), Our History Has Always Been Contraband: In Defense of Black Studies;His essays have appeared in dozens of publications, including The Nation, New York Times, New York Review of Books, Hammer and Hope, Black Music Research Journal, Callaloo, Black Scholar, American Quarterly, and The Boston Review, for which he is a contributing editor.

Project STAND is a radical grassroots archival consortia project between colleges and universities around the country; to create a centralized digital space highlighting analog and digital collections emphasizing student activism in marginalized communities. Project STAND aims to foster ethical documentation of contemporary and past social justice movements in underdocumented student populations. STAND advocates for collections by collaborating with educators to provide pedagogical support, create digital resources, hosts workshops and forums for students, information professionals, academics, technologists, humanists, etc. interested in building communities with student organizers and their allies, leading to sustainable relationships, and inclusive physical and digital spaces of accountability, diversity, and equity. Visit the Project STAND website(opens in a new tab) to learn more about their story, mission and programs.