Participant Info

First Name
Kathleen
Last Name
Belew
Country
United States
State
IL Illinois
Affiliation
University of Chicago
Website URL
https://www.kathleenbelew.com/
Keywords
Violence, war, paramilitarism, social history, cultural history, twentieth century, twenty-first century, history of the present, white nationalism, alt-right
Availability
Media Contact
Additional Contact Information
please contact Sonya Bonczek Senior Publicist Harvard University Press 617.495.1284 79 Garden Street Cambridge, MA 02138
PhD
PhD

Personal Info

Photo
About Me

Kathleen Belew is Assistant Professor of U.S. History and the College at the University of Chicago. She specializes in the recent history of the United States, examining the long aftermath of warfare.

Her first book, Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America (Harvard University Press, Spring 2018), explores how white power activists wrought a cohesive social movement through a common story about warfare and its weapons, uniforms, and technologies. By uniting previously disparate Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazi, skinhead, and other groups, the movement carried out escalating acts of violence that reached a crescendo in the 1995 bombing of Oklahoma City.

Belew has held postdoctoral fellowships from Northwestern University and Rutgers University. Her research has received the support of the Andrew W. Mellon and Jacob K. Javits Foundations, as well as Albert J. Beveridge and John F. Enders grants for research in Mexico and Nicaragua. She holds a doctoral degree in American Studies from Yale University (2011). She earned her undergraduate degree in the Comparative History of Ideas from the University of Washington in 2005, where she was named Dean’s Medalist in the Humanities.

Belew is at work on two new projects, one focusing on processes of militarization in the domestic United States and the other on ideas of the apocalypse in American history and culture. Her award-winning teaching centers on the broad themes of race, gender, violence, identity, and the meaning of war.

Recent Publications

Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2018)

Media Coverage
https://www.kathleenbelew.com/media/
Country Focus
United States
Expertise by Geography
United States
Expertise by Chronology
20th century, 21st century
Expertise by Topic
Military, Politics, Race, Rebellion & Revolution