![Professor Reiland Rabaka](/ethnicstudies/sites/default/files/styles/small/public/people/rabaka_press_photo_2223-1.jpg?itok=hjy_Kz9_)
Office Location: Ketchum 257
Pronouns: he / him / his
Ìý
Education
Ph.D., Temple University
M.A., Temple UniversityÌý
B.F.A., University of the Arts
Postdoctoral Fellowship, Center for African American Studies (CAAS), College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences (CLASS), University of Houston
Research Interests
African and African American history, African and African American politics, African and African American social movements, Black feminist theory, Black sexuality studies, Black popular culture, Black popular music, critical race theory, and decolonial theory
Reiland Rabaka isÌýProfessor of African, African American, and Caribbean Studies in the Department of Ethnic Studies andÌýthe Founder and Director of the Center for African & African American Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. He is also a Research Fellow in the College of Human Sciences at the University of South Africa (UNISA). RabakaÌýhas published 19 books and more than 100 scholarly articles, book chapters, and essays. His books includeÌýAfricana Critical Theory;ÌýAgainst Epistemic Apartheid: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Disciplinary Decadence of Sociology;ÌýForms of Fanonism: Frantz Fanon’s Critical Theory and the Dialectics of Decolonization;ÌýConcepts of Cabralism: Amilcar Cabral and the Africana Tradition of Critical Theory;ÌýThe Negritude Movement;ÌýThe Routledge Handbook of Pan-Africanism; andÌýDu Bois: A Critical Introduction.ÌýA wing of his work has made significant contributions to African American musicology, and his books in this area includeÌýCivil Rights Music: The Soundtracks of the Civil Rights Movement;ÌýBlack Power Music!: Protest Songs, Message Music, and the Black Power Movement;ÌýBlack Women’s Liberation Movement Music: Soul Sisters, Black Feminist Funksters, and Afro-Disco Divas; The Funk Movement: Music, Culture, and Politics; Hip Hop’s Inheritance;ÌýHip Hop’s Amnesia; andÌýThe Hip Hop Movement.ÌýAcademic journals Rabaka has publishedÌýin includeÌýJournal of Black Studies,ÌýJournal of African American Studies, InternationalÌýJournal of Africana Studies,ÌýAfricana Studies Annual Review,ÌýAfricalogical Perspectives,ÌýEthnic Studies Review,ÌýJournal of Classical Sociology,ÌýHistory of Humanities,ÌýThe Philosopher, Raisons politiques: Revue de théorie politique, and Revista da Associação Brasileira de Pesquisadores/as Negros/as (ABPN), among others. He has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Science Foundation, theÌýNational Museum of African American History & Culture, the National Museum of American History, the Smithsonian Institution,ÌýtheÌýEugene M. Kayden Book Award, theÌýCheikh Anta Diop Book Award, and the National Council for Black Studies’ÌýDistinguished Career Award.ÌýHe has conducted archival research and lectured extensively both nationally and internationally, and he has been the recipient of several community service citations, distinguished teaching awards, and research fellowships. His cultural criticism, social commentary, and political analysis has been featured in print, radio, television, and online media venues such as NPR, PBS, BBC, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, MTV, BET, VH1,ÌýThe New York Times, The Associated Press, and The Guardian, among others. ÌýHe is also a poet and musician.Ìý
Selected Publications
Books
Reiland Rabaka, The Funk Movement: Music, Culture, and Politics (London: Routledge, 2025).
Reiland Rabaka, Black Women’s Liberation Movement Music: Soul Sisters, Black Feminist Funksters, and Afro-Disco Divas (London: Routledge, 2023).
Reiland Rabaka,ÌýBlack Power Music!: Protest Songs, Message Music, and the Black Power MovementÌý(London: Routledge, 2022).
Reiland Rabaka, Du Bois: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge: Polity, 2021).
Reiland Rabaka, ed., The Routledge Handbook of Pan-Africanism (London: Routledge, 2020).
Reiland Rabaka, ed., W.E.B. Du Bois: A Critical Reader (London: Routledge, 2017).
Reiland Rabaka,ÌýCivil Rights Music: The Soundtracks of the Civil Rights Movement (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016).
Reiland Rabaka,ÌýThe Negritude Movement: W.E.B. Du Bois, Leon Damas, Aime Cesaire, Leopold Senghor, Frantz Fanon, and the Evolution of an Insurgent Idea (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015).
Reiland Rabaka, Concepts of Cabralism: Amilcar Cabral and Africana Critical TheoryÌý(Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014).
Reiland Rabaka, The Hip Hop Movement: From R&B and the Civil Rights Movement to Rap and the Hip Hop Generation (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013).
Reiland Rabaka, Hip Hop’s Amnesia: From Blues and the Black Women’s Club Movement to Rap and the Hip Hop Movement (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012).
Reiland Rabaka,ÌýHip Hop’s Inheritance: From the Harlem Renaissance to the Hip Hop Feminist Movement (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2011).
Arturo Aldama, Elisa Facio, Daryl Maeda, and Reiland Rabaka, eds. Enduring Legacies: Ethnic Histories and Cultures of Colorado (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2011).
Reiland Rabaka, ed., W.E.B. Du Bois: The International Library of Essays in Classical Sociology (London: Ashgate, 2010).
Reiland Rabaka, Against Epistemic Apartheid: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Disciplinary Decadence of Sociology (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010).
Reiland Rabaka, Forms of Fanonism: Frantz Fanon’s Critical Theory and the Dialectics of Decolonization (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010).
Reiland Rabaka, Africana Critical Theory: Reconstructing the Black Radical Tradition, from W.E.B. Du Bois and C.L.R. James to Frantz Fanon and Amilcar Cabral (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009).
Reiland Rabaka, Du Bois’s Dialectics: Black Radical Politics and the Reconstruction of Critical Social Theory (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008).
Reiland Rabaka, W.E.B. Du Bois and the Problems of the Twenty-First Century: An Essay on Africana Critical Theory (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007).