Jeffrey Ogbar

Professor, History

Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar is Professor of History and the founding Director of the Center for the Study of Popular Music. Prior to this role, he served as the University of Connecticut’s Vice Provost for Diversity and Chief Diversity Officer. Dr. Ogbar served as Associate Dean for the Humanities in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, 2009-2012 and Director of the Institute for African American Studies, 2003-2009. He is the author of Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), winner of an “Outstanding Academic Title” from Choice (2005) and editor of Civil Rights: Problems in American Civilization (Houghton Mifflin 2003). His book, Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap (University Press of Kansas), was published in fall 2007. It is the winner of the W.E.B. Du Bois Book Prize from the Northeast Black Studies Association (2008). He published The Harlem Renaissance Revisited: Politics, Arts and Letters, an edited volume, in 2010 by Johns Hopkins University Press. In 2018 he released Keywords for African American Studies (New York University Press), with co-editors Erica R. Edwards and Roderick A. Ferguson. Dr. Ogbar’s articles appear in the Journal of Religious Thought, Journal of Black Studies, Souls, Centro and Radical Society among other academic journals. He is currently working on his newest book, a history of white nationalism and the shaping of Atlanta (under contract with Basic Books). Raised in Los Angeles, California, Ogbar is a member of Phi Beta Kappa international honor society; he received his BA in history from Morehouse College and his MA and Ph.D. degrees in history from Indiana University.

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