Reiland Rabaka

Associate Professor
B.F.A., University of the Arts
M.A., Temple University
Ph.D., Temple University – African American Studies

REILAND RABAKA is an associate professor of Africana Studies in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he is also an affiliate professor of Women and Gender Studies and a research fellow at the Center for Studies of Ethnicity and Race in America (CSERA). He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. During the 2003-2004 academic-year he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for African American Studies (CAAS) at the University of Houston. Dr. Rabaka’s research interests include Africana philosophy, critical race theory, feminist theory, postcolonial theory, radical politics, critical social theory, critical pedagogy, and liberation theology. Included among his regular teaching topics are black abolitionism, the Black Women’s Club Movement, Pan-Africanism, Negritude, black nationalism, black Marxism, the New Negro Movement, the Harlem Renaissance, the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Power Movement, the Black Women’s Liberation Movement, black feminism, womanism, and Hip Hop Studies. His research has been published in Journal of African American Studies, Journal of Black Studies, Western Journal of Black Studies, Africana Studies Annual Review, Africalogical Perspectives, Handbook of Black Studies, Ethnic Studies Review, and Jouvert: A Journal of Postcolonial Studies, among others.

Professor Rabaka’s research thus far has three principle foci. The first focus falls under the rubric of what is currently called Du Bois Studies. In particular, his interests in this area lie in examining W.E.B. Du Bois’s intellectual and political legacy for its contribution to: a) Africana Studies, b) American Studies, c) Racial and Ethnic Studies, d) Cultural Studies, e) Postcolonial Studies, f) Critical White Studies, g) Gender and Women’s Studies, h) Critical Pedagogy, i) Liberation Theology, and j) Reparations Theory. The second focus is the study of black radical politics, specifically ways in which black radicals have critiqued and combated both European colonialism and white conservativism and the black bourgeoisie and colonized African and African American capitalist elites. The final focus of his research is geared toward broadening the base of critical social theory, making it more multicultural, transethnic, transgender, sexuality-sensitive, and non-Western European philosophy focused by placing it in dialogue with theory and phenomena it has heretofore woefully neglected. Widely considered one of the leading Du Bois scholars of his generation, Professor Rabaka is the author of two books, W.E.B. Du Bois and the Problems of the Twenty-First Century: An Essay on Africana Critical Theory and Du Bois’s Dialectics: Black Radical Politics and the Reconstruction of Critical Social Theory, both published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. His first book, W.E.B. Du Bois and the Problems of the Twenty-First Century, was nominated for several awards, including the W.E.B. Du Bois-Ida B. Wells Book Award by the National Council for Black Studies and the Best Scholarly Book of 2007 by the Cheikh Anta Diop International Conference Award Committee. He is, in addition, the co-editor (along with Arturo Aldama, Elisa Facio and Daryl Maeda) of the groundbreaking volume, Telling Our Stories: Ethnic Histories and Cultures of Colorado, published by the University Press of Colorado.

Dr. Rabaka, who received his B.F.A. in philosophy of art and performing arts from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is also a poet, playwright, and musician. His poetry has been published in the Talking Drum, Uhuru!, Harambee Notes, Imhotep, Ujima, and the Voice, among others. He is a jazz drummer and percussionist, and has recorded three compact discs of his spoken-word/poetry with the be-bop to hip hop experimental music ensemble, Collective Consciousness. Deeply influenced by the writings of Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka, Wole Soyinka, Toni Morrison, Chinua Achebe, Alice Walker, August Wilson, Ngugi, Suzan-Lori Parks and Ayi Kwei Armah, among others, Professor Rabaka has maintained a long-standing love affair with black literature and the literati of Africa and its diaspora. His ongoing teaching and research interests in the arts, specifically the social and political implications of African, African American and Caribbean aesthetics, include: jazz studies, the Harlem Renaissance, Negritude, the Black Arts Movement, the Black Aesthetic, reggae music and the Rastafari Movement, rap music and Hip Hop culture, Africana cinema, and the utilization of popular culture as a critical pedagogical tool. 

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS