September 11, 2026
9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts & Humanities at Auburn University
Pebble Hill
101 S. Debardeleben Street, Auburn
Keynote Address by Dr. Robin D.G. Kelley
Robin D. G. Kelley is the Distinguished Professor and Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U. S. History and professor of African American studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. He specializes in the history of social movements in the U.S., the African Diaspora and Africa; Black intellectuals; music; visual culture; contemporary urban studies; historiography and historical theory; poverty studies and ethnography; and organized labor, among other topics. Kelley is the author of several books including the prizewinning Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (2009); Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression (1990); Race Rebels: Culture Politics and the Black Working Class (1994); Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times (2012); Yo’ Mama’s DisFunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America (1997), which was selected one of the top ten books of the year by the Village Voice; and Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (2002/2022). He is a coauthor of Three Strikes: Miners, Musicians, Salesgirls, and the Fighting Spirit of Labor’s Last Century (2001) and a coeditor of Black, Brown, and Beige: Surrealist Writings from Africa and the Diaspora (2009), recipient of an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation; and To Make Our World Anew: A History of African Americans (2005).