Dennis Childs

Dennis Childs is associate professor of literature and an affiliated faculty member of ethnic studies at the University of California, San Diego. Professor Childs received his PhD in english from the University of California, Berkeley, and his MA in african-american studies from the University of California, Los Angeles. His recent book, Slaves of the State: Black Incarceration from the Chain Gang to the Penitentiary, offers a cultural, legal and political history of racial capitalist misogynist incarceration in the US from the late 19th century through the prison industrial complex. Childs has received research fellowships through numerous sources including the Hellman Fund, the University of California President’s Postdoctoral Program and the Ford Foundation. Most recently he was scholar-in-residence at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, New York.