Biography:

Kathleen Belew is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Chicago, where she specializes in the recent history of the United States. Her first book, Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America (Harvard, 2018), documented the white power movement from the late 1970s to the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. Belew’s research has been featured on Fresh Air, Weekend Edition, and CBS News, and her book has provided the backbone of major reporting projects in The New York Times, PBS Frontline, and more. She has testified before Congress, to intelligence agencies, and to tech companies about the threat of white power violence.

Monograph Enhancement: A Field Guide to White Supremacy (University of California Press, forthcoming Fall 2021)

Belew's book, A Field Guide to White Supremacy (University of California Press, forthcoming Fall 2021), illuminates the longand complex career of white supremacist and patriarchal violence in the United States, ranging across time and across impacted groups in order to provide a working volume for those who wish to recognize, understand, name, and oppose it. We focus here not only on the most catastrophic incidents of white supremacist domestic terrorism—like the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building and more recent mass shootings at stores and places of worship—but also on the manifold ways that overt and covert white supremacy, supported by often-violent patriarchy and gender norms, have shaped American law, life, and policy.