Daniel Widener

Danny Widener teaches Modern American history, with a focus on expressive culture and political radicalism. He began his educational career at the Echo Park-Silverlake Peoples’ Childcare Center. He studied at Berkeley and New York University.  He teaches courses on Cuba, African American History, California, Sport, and Film.  He is a supporter of Tottenham Hotspur.

Associate Professor, Department of History, UCSD 2003-present Visiting Professor, Bunche Center for African American Studies/ 2006-2007 Institute of American Cultures, UCLA, Visiting Professor, Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey Summer 2006 Acting Assistant Professor, Department of History, UCSD July 2002-Jan 2003Instructor, Los Angeles City College 2000-2002

Danny Widener teaches Modern American history, with a focus on expressive culture and political radicalism. He began his educational career at the Echo Park-Silverlake Peoples’ Childcare Center. He studied at Berkeley and New York University.  He teaches courses on Cuba, African American History, California, Sport, and Film.  He is a supporter of Tottenham Hotspur.  

Academic Employment

Associate Professor, Department of History, UCSD 2003-present Visiting Professor, Bunche Center for African American Studies/ 2006-2007 Institute of American Cultures, UCLA, Visiting Professor, Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey Summer 2006 Acting Assistant Professor, Department of History, UCSD July 2002-Jan 2003Instructor, Los Angeles City College 2000-2002

Education

Ph. D., January 2003, New York University, American History

B. A., May 1995, University of California, Berkeley, Comparative Ethnic Studies, summa cum laude

B. A., May 1995, University of California, Berkeley, History, cum laude

Books

Black Arts West: Culture and Struggle in black Los Angeles, Black Arts West: Culture and Struggle in black Los Angeles, 1942-1992 (Duke, 2010).

Honorable Mention, John Hope Franklin Prize, Best Book in American Studies, 2011

(American Studies Association)

Black California Dreamin’: Social Vision and the Crisis of California’s African American

Communities, Co-edited with Ingrid Banks, George Lipsitz, Gaye Johnson, and Ula Taylor. (Santa Barbara: Center for Black Studies Research, 2012) 

Articles and Review Essays

“Studios in the Street: Creative Community and Visual Arts,” Nka Journal of Contemporary African Art (2011) (29): 32-41.

“Setting the Seen: Hollywood, South Los Angeles, and the Politics of Film,” in Josh Sides (ed.) Post-Ghetto: New Perspectives on South Los Angeles  (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011)

“Brown Eyed Soul: Popular Music and Politics in Los Angeles,” co-authored with Luis Alvarez in Brian

Behnkin (ed.), The Struggle in Black and Brown: African American and Mexican American Relations during the Civil Rights Era (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011)

 “A History of Black and Brown: Chicano/a—African American Cultural and Political Relations,” co-authored with Luis Alvarez, Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies, volume 33, no. 1 (spring 2008), 143-155

 “Another City is Possible: Interethnic Organizing in Los Angeles,” Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary Global Contexts volume 1, no.2, (spring 2008), 188-219

“Writing Watts: Budd Schulberg, the Watts Writers Workshop, and the War on Poverty,” Journal of Urban History volume 34, no. 4, (May 2008), 665-687

“Seoul City Sue and the Bugout Blues: Black Dissent and the Forgotten War,” in Fred Ho and Bill V. Mullen (eds.), Afro/Asia: Revolutionary Connections (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), 55-87

 “’Perhaps the Japanese are to be Thanked:’ African-Americans and Japanese in interwar Los Angeles,” Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique, volume 11, no.1 (spring 2003)

Research Interests

• African American Cultural History
• Comparative Ethnic Studies
• California and the American West
• Transnational and Comparative Methodology
• Islam and Indigenous African Religions

Works in Progress

Professor Widener is currently at work preparing an anthology on the intersection of African American and Chicano history. He is also completing a book on African American responses to the Korean War.

Selected Recent Administrative Experience

Member, Academic Senate Task Force on the Faculty Reward System II (TFFRS), 2011-2012

Member, Academic Senate Committee on Admissions, 2009-2013

Faculty Director, African American Studies Minor, 2009-2011

UC San Diego Representative, Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools (BOARS) 2010-2013

• HILD 7A. Race and Ethnicity in the United States.
• HILA 122. Cuba: From Colony to Socialist Republic.
• HIUS 117. History of Los Angeles.
• HIUS 122. History and Hollywood.
• HIUS 134. African American Cultural History.
• HIUS139/ETHN 149. 20th Century African-American History.
• HIUS 181/281. Topics in Twentieth Century United States History (seminar):
• The Afro-Asian Century
• Black Marxism
• HIUS 183/283/ETHN 159. Topics in African American History (seminar):
• The Politics of Jazz
• Who Owns the 1960s
• HITO 87. Freshman Seminar:
• Che Guevara: Myth, Icon, and Message
• California Reds: Left Politics in the Golden State
• Rasta and Resistance