Legacies In The Making: Angela Davis, a Contemporary Visionary

For almost four decades, Angela Y. Davis’s scholarship and activism has defined the meaning and practice of being a public intellectual and has radically transformed many sites of knowledge production, including the positioning of the U.S. academy as a site of intervention and social transformation. Few professors have had such a broad impact in their fields of expertise or on the world in their lifetimes. This gathering of her former students, in conversation with scholars nationally, mapped the impact of her vision on issues such as democratic theory, philosophy, Marxism, cultural studies/popular culture, social policy, race, class, and feminisms. This conference examined the poetics and politics of Professor Davis’s pedagogy in California over the past forty years (1969-2009) and to consider how her role as an activist-scholar-teacher bridges the academy/community divide and dismantles the false dichotomy of theory/praxis. The event was organized by Conferences & Seminars grantee Maylei Blackwell, Chicana and Chicano Studies, UCLA. Event Website