Keynote Speakers | DISSENT 2022

Ralph Young

Dr. Ralph Young is a history professor at Temple University. He is the winner of several major teaching awards, including Temple's highest honor, the Great Teacher Award, and the founder of the weekly campus-wide “teach-ins” at Temple University in which students and faculty investigate the historical context of controversial contemporary issues. His book, Dissent: The History of an American Idea, a narrative history of the United States from the standpoint of dissenters and protest movements, was a finalist for the 2016 Phi Beta Kappa Ralph Waldo Emerson Award. His other books are Make Art Not War: Political Protest Posters from the Twentieth Century, and Dissent in America: Voices That Shaped a Nation. He was a Fulbright Specialist Fellow at the University of Rome and has taught seminars on dissent movements there and at Charles University in Prague and Tübingen University in Germany.

Erica Violet Lee

Erica Violet Lee is a Cree writer, scholar, and Indigenous activist from Saskatoon, Canada. An organizer with Indigenous Climate Action, Erica holds an MEd in Social Justice Education from the University of Toronto. Her writing is an anti-colonial celebration of unrepentant feeling, joy, and a call for radical action in a world that tells Native girls that freedom is impossible. Erica's work has appeared in numerous publications including The Guardian, The Globe and Mail, Brick: A Literary Journal, Contemporary Verse 2, Held Magazine, Red Rising Magazine, and Decolonization Journal. Her first book of poetry will be published in Spring 2023.

Paul Von Blum

Paul Von Blum is Senior Lecturer in African American Studies and Communication Studies at UCLA. He has taught at the University of California since 1968, serving 11 years at UC Berkeley before arriving at UCLA in 1980. He is the author of six books and numerous articles on art, culture, education, and politics. His most recent book is “A Life at the Margins: Keeping the Political Vision,” his 2011 memoir that chronicles almost 50 years of political activism, starting with his civil rights work in the South and elsewhere in the early 1960s. He is the author of three books on art and society as well as numerous articles on art, politics, culture, education and law including "Resistance Art in Los Angeles," Unmasking L.A.: Third Worlds and the City. "Decades of Dignity: The Art of William Pajaud," The Sights and Sounds of My New Orleans, in conjuntion with an art exhibition of the same name at the California African American Museum, Los Angeles, curated by Samella Lewis, "Not as Strange as it Seems: Bioethics and Art," Bioethics: Thresholds of Corporeal Completeness, in conjunction with an art exhibit of the same name at Side Street Projects, Santa Monica, California, Side Street Press. His book "Resistance, Dignity and Pride: African American art in Los Angeles" was published by the UCLA Center for African American Studies.