Dennis R CHILDS - Ph.D. (UC Berkeley) Primary Office: LIT 426 Primary Phone: (858) 534-2393 Email: drchilds@ucsd.edu Dennis Childs is the recipient of a Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship in 2004-05. His dissertation, Formations of Neoslavery: The Cultures and Politics of the American Carceral State, focuses on the institutional processes whereby forms of subjugation, forced labor and incarceration of black people persisted after Emancipation, and deals with ways in which African American culture registers these processes and resistance to them in literature and in song. Upon graduation, Dr. Childs was awarded two postdoctoral fellowships, a Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship at UC Berkeley (which he declined), and a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship under which he engaged in research at the UCLA School of Law, under the mentorship of Professor Cheryl Harris. Dr. Childs has written on literary works by Toni Morrison and other African American authors, on the blues and folk musician Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Leadbelly, on canonical narratives by former slaves such as Harriet Wilson and Frederick Douglass, and on modern prison narratives by Malcolm X, George Jackson, and Assata Shakur. He has published an article, "Angola, Convict Leasing, and the Annulment of Freedom: The Vectors of Architectural and Discursive Violence in the US 'Slavery of Prison,'" in Violence and the Body, ed. Arturo Aldama ( Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003). Dr. Childs will teach courses in African American literature and in our general curriculum in American literature; he will also offer courses for our new major in Cultural Studies, and for Thurgood Marshall College’s minor in African American Studies. He will also be an important resource for the Ethnic Studies Department which participated in a joint effort with the Literature Department in recruiting him to UCSD. Dr. Childs grew up in San Diego and was educated in local public schools, including Hoover High School where he has returned periodically to give informational and motivational talks. He will be an important asset to UCSD’s outreach efforts in San Diego and elsewhere, especially with respect to students from historically underrepresented communities.