Angela Y. Davis

Angela Y. Davis is known internationally for her ongoing work to combat all forms of oppression in the U.S. and abroad. Davis is a prolific, wide-ranging, and highly influential philosopher and public intellectual. Over the years she has been active as a student, teacher, writer, scholar, and activist/organizer. She is a living witness to the historical struggles of the contemporary era and her areas of work include the complex relationship between gender, race, and class oppressions, as well as critical studies of incarceration.

She has an international scholarly reputation and has made original contributions in social and political philosophy, critical theory, African American studies, feminist philosophy, and cultural studies (popular music and photography). Her articles and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, and she is the author of nine books, including Angela Davis: An Autobiography; Women, Race, and Class; Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday; The Angela Y. Davis Reader; Are Prisons Obsolete?; a new edition of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass; and The Meaning of Freedom.

Davis’ teaching career has taken her to San Francisco State University, Mills College and the University of California, Berkeley. She also has taught at the University of California, Los Angeles, Vassar College, the Claremont Colleges and Stanford University. She has spent the last fifteen years at the University of California, Santa Cruz where she is now Distinguished Professor Emerita of History of Consciousness, an interdisciplinary doctoral program, and of feminist studies. In 1994, she received the distinguished honor of an appointment to the University of California Presidential Chair in African American and Feminist Studies.