Book signing by former Vera Mellon Fellow Khalil Gibran Muhammad, PhD

Khalil Gibran Muhammad, assistant professor of history at Indiana University and former Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at Vera, will discuss his research on the evolving ways that 20th century social scientists and social reformers have imagined African Americans as a distinctly criminal population.

Following his talk, Muhammad will sign copies of his new book, The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America (Harvard University Press), which explores how the idea of black criminality has influenced urban development and social policies. Glenn Loury, Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences and Professor of Economics at Brown University, calls Muhammad’s book “the most significant work in the study of race and American society to have appeared in the past decade.”

As a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Vera from 2003 to 2005, Muhammad studied the origins of New York’s four strikes legislation in the 1920s. His research interests include race relations, urbanization, and the racial politics of criminal law, policing, juvenile delinquency, and punishment.