Reiland Rabaka

  • Professor • Director, Center for African and African American Studies
  • AFRICANA STUDIES
  • CRITICAL RACE CLASS GENDER AND SEXUALITY STUDIES
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Pronouns: he / him / his

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Education

Ph.D., Temple University
M.A., Temple University 
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 is Professor of African, African American, and Caribbean Studies in the Department of Ethnic Studies and the Founder and Director of the Center for African & African American Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. He has held international visiting professorships and lectureships at the University of Cape Verde, University of South Africa, University of the West Indies, University of Toronto, Kazi Nazrul University, India, and Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil, among others. Rabaka has published 21 books and more than 100 scholarly articles, book chapters, and essays. His books include Africana Critical Theory; Against Epistemic Apartheid: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Disciplinary Decadence of Sociology; Forms of Fanonism: Frantz Fanon’s Critical Theory and the Dialectics of Decolonization; Concepts of Cabralism: Amilcar Cabral and the Africana Tradition of Critical Theory; The Negritude Movement; The Routledge Handbook of Pan-Africanism; and Du Bois: A Critical Introduction. A wing of his work has made important contributions to African American musicology, and his books in this area include Civil Rights Music: The Soundtracks of the Civil Rights Movement; Black Power Music!: Protest Songs, Message Music, and the Black Power Movement; Black Women’s Liberation Movement Music: Soul Sisters, Black Feminist Funksters, and Afro-Disco Divas; The Funk Movement: Music, Culture, and Politics; Black Feminist Funk: Funk Women and Black Musical Feminism; Hip Hop’s Inheritance; Hip Hop’s Amnesia; and The Hip Hop Movement. Rabaka 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, the National Museum of African American History & Culture, the National Museum of American History, the Smithsonian Institution, the Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) Best Black Popular Music History Book Award, the Eugene M. Kayden Book Award, the Cheikh Anta Diop Book Award, and the National Council for Black Studies Distinguished Career Award. He 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 have been featured in print, radio, television, and online media venues such as NPR, PBS, BBC, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, MTV, BET, VH1, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Associated Press, and The Guardian, among others. He is also a poet and musician.

Selected Publications

Books

Reiland Rabaka, Black Feminist Funk: Funk Women and Black Musical Feminism (London: Routledge, 2026).

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, Black Power Music!: Protest Songs, Message Music, and the Black Power Movement (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, Civil Rights Music: The Soundtracks of the Civil Rights Movement (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016).

Reiland Rabaka, The 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 Theory (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, Hip 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).