Join us for a book talk by Professor Kyle T. Mays, focused on his publication An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States. Mays’ work broadly explores three questions: What is the relationship between Blackness and Indigeneity? How does dispossession in cities shape the lives of Black and Indigenous peoples? How can we imagine and put into praxis a world in the aftermath of settler colonialism and white supremacy? 

Kyle T. Mays (he/his) is an Afro-Indigenous (Saginaw Chippewa) writer and scholar of U.S. history, urban studies, race relations, and contemporary popular culture. He is an associate professor of African American studies, American Indian studies, and history at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is the author of Hip Hop Beats, Indigenous Rhymes: Modernity and Hip Hop in Indigenous North America (SUNY Press, 2018); An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States (Beacon Press, 2021); and City of Dispossessions: Indigenous Peoples, African Americans, and the Creation of Modern Detroit (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022). He contributed a chapter, “Blackness and Indigeneity” to the New York Times bestseller, 400 Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019, Keisha Blain and Ibram Kendi (eds.), (Random House, 2021).

This program is co-sponsored by the African Studies Center at UCLA.