Event Contact

cenhum@wustl.edu

Speaker Information

About the keynote speaker:

Davarian L. Baldwin is a leading urbanist, historian and cultural critic. His work largely examines the landscape of global cities through the lens of the African Diasporic experience. Baldwin’s related interests include universities and urban development, the racial foundations of academic thought, intellectual and mass culture, Black radical thought and transnational social movements, the politics of heritage tourism, and 20th- and 21st-century art, architecture and urban design. At Trinity College, he is the Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of American Studies and founding director of the Trinity’s Smart Cities Research Lab.

Baldwin’s research, writing and commentary has been featured in numerous outlets including NBC News, CNN, PBS, SIRIUS XM, The History Channel, NPR, BBC Radio, TIME, Washington Post, The Guardian, The Business Journals, USA Today and The Daily Beast. He is the author of In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities are Plundering Our Cities (Bold Type Books, 2021), Chicago’s New Negroes: Modernity, the Great Migration, and Black Urban Life (UNC, 2007) and co-editor, with Minkah Makalani, of the essay collection Escape From New York! The New Negro Renaissance beyond Harlem (Minnesota, 2013). He is currently finishing “Land of Darkness: Chicago and the Making of Race in Modern America” (Oxford University Press).