Angela D. Dillard
Associate Profesor & Associate Director of CAAS RC Department: Social Theory and Practice adillard@umich.edu
Office: 106 Tyler Office hours: Tuesdays 1-2:30 and by appointment
Professor Angela D. Dillard specializes in American and African-American intellectual history, particularly around issues of race, religion and politics — on both the Left and the Right sides of the political spectrum. Her first book, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner Now?: Multicultural Conservatism in America (NYU Press, 2001) was among the first critical studies of conservative political thought among African Americans, Latinos, women and homosexuals. Her second book, Faith in the City: Preaching Radical Social Change in Detroit (U of Michigan Press, 2007), focuses on the interconnections of religion and political radicalism in Detroit from the 1930s to the 1960s. Both books reflect Professor Dillard’s interests in the study of political ideologies — how they emerge, how they get deployed in the context of political movements, and how they change over the course of time.
Professor Dillard is currently at work on a political biography of James H. Meredith, the icon of the civil rights movement turned conservative Republican, and has recently launched The Black Church Project, a public history initiative involving churches in Detroit and Ann Arbor.
Recent Courses
“Social Criticism” (First Year Seminar)
“Varieties of Conservatism”
“Race and Science Fiction”
Selected Articles
“Adventures in Conservative Feminism,” Society 42:3 (March/April 2005): 25-27.
“How the New Black Elite Peddles Conservatism,” New Labor Forum 13:1 (Spring 2004): 31-38
“Religion and Radicalism: The Reverend Albert B. Cleage, Jr. and the Rise of a Black Nationalist Coalition in Detroit,” Freedom North: Black Freedom Struggles Outside the South, 1940-1980, edited by J. Theoharris and K. Woodward (St.Martin’s/Palgrave, 2003): 153-175
“A Multicultural Right?: Can the GOP Build a Coalition?, Dissent (Winter 2001): 113-117
“Multicultural Conservatism: What It Is, Why It Matters,” Chronicle Review, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 2, 2001, B7-B10
Books Published
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner Now?: Multicultural Conservatism in America (NYU Press, 2001)
Faith in the City: Preaching Radical Social Change in Detroit (U of Michigan Press, 2007)