- Associate Professor and Department Chair
- Washburn Hall, Rm 109
- Phone: 401.874.2112
- Email: rwidell@uri.edu
Biography
Dr. Robert W. Widell, Jr. (he/him) is Associate Professor at the University of Rhode Island where he also serves as chair of the Department of History and the director of the Oral History Lab. His teaching and research interests are grounded in African American History & late-twentieth century United States History with a particular emphasis on political movements, the Black Freedom Struggle, and the American South. Originally from Auburn, Alabama, Dr. Widell lives in Wakefield, Rhode Island, where he spends his non-academic moments parenting his two children, running, and following the fortunes of the Liverpool Football Club and the Auburn University Tigers.
Research
Professor Widell reads and writes about the Black Freedom Struggle, political movements, and the late twentieth-century United States. His first book, Birmingham and the Long Black Freedom Struggle, chronicled activist efforts by African Americans in Birmingham, Alabama, in the two decades that followed the well-known events of 1963 in that city. His current, long-term research project explores the history of capital punishment, prison organizing, and mass incarceration in Alabama during the 1970s and 1980s through an exploration of the case of Johnny “Imani” Harris.
Education
- Ph.D., Emory University, 2007
- M.A., Emory University, 2003
- B.A., Duke University, 1996
Selected Publications
Birmingham and the Long Black Freedom Struggle, Palgrave MacMillan, Contemporary Black History Series, 2013
“‘The Power Belongs to Us and We Belong to the Revolutionary Age’: The Alabama Black Liberation Front and the Long Reach of the Black Panther Party,” in Liberated Territory: Untold Local Perspectives on the Black Panther Party, 2008.