Kwame Holmes

Scholar in Residence, Human Rights

Primary Academic Program: Human Rights

Biography: Kwame Holmes, who has served as a faculty adviser to the Bard Prison Initiative and assistant professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado in Boulder, is currently at work on his manuscript Queer Removal: Liberalism and Displacement in the Nation’s Capital, 1957–1999. He also serves on the board of directors for the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition. Holmes’s research engages the intersection of race, sexuality, class identities, and politics within the history of the modern city. Publications include the articles and book chapters “Jessye Norman and the Struggle for Black Pathos,” Black Perspectives (2019); “The End of Queer Urban History?,” Routledge History of Queer America (2018); “Gaydar, Marriage, and Rip-Roaring Homosexuals: Discourses about Homosexuality in Dear Abby and Ann Landers Advice Columns, 1967–1982,” Journal of Homosexuality (2018); “Beyond the Flames: Queering the History of the 1968 D.C. Riot,” in No Tea, No Shade: Black Queer Studies, Vol. 2 (2016); and “What’s the T: Gossip and the Production of Black Gay Social History,” Radical History Review (2015). His review essays have appeared in publications such as TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, Washington History, and English Language Notes. He has also authored encyclopedia articles for Multicultural America: A Multimedia Encyclopedia and Gale Library of Daily Life: Slavery in America. He is the recipient of numerous honors and fellowships, including postdoctoral fellowships at Carnegie Mellon University’s Center for Africanamerican Urban Studies and the Economy and the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American and African Studies at the University of Virginia; Nicholson Graduate Fellow, Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities at Urbana Champaign; and Graduate Fellow, National Science Foundation GK–12 Program.  

BA, Florida A&M University; PhD, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. At Bard since 2020.
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