Biography
C. Richard King, professor and chair of Humanities, History, and Social Sciences, comes to Columbia College Chicago from Washington State University, where he was professor of comparative ethnic studies and chaired the Department of Critical Culture, Gender, and Race Studies. Dr. King has taught previously at Drake University, the University of Passau in Germany, and the University of Graz in Austria, where he was Fulbright Professor of Cultural Studies in Spring 2017.
Trained as an anthropologist, Dr. King studies the racial politics of culture. He is particularly interested in uses and understandings of Indianness, white supremacist movements and ideologies, and the forms of memory, representation, identity, and power animating race relations. He has explored these themes in the context of expressive culture (museums, sports, films, music) and political struggles (indigenous activism concerned with representation, naming, and history). He is the author/editor of several books, including Team Spirits: The Native American Mascot Controversy (a CHOICE 2001 Outstanding Academic Title), Postcolonial America, Animating Difference: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Films for Children, Beyond Hate: White Power and Popular Culture, and most recently Redskins: Insult and Brand.
Instructional Areas
race and representaion, sport and society, white power movements and ideologies, imagining American Indians in Chicago
Creative Practice and Research Interests
The racial politics of culture, sport, the Native American mascot controversy, indigeneity, race and representation, collective memory, public culture (museums, tourism, and consumption), popular culture (animation, films, and video games), white power movements and ideologies, anti-semitism, theories of race and racism, qualitative methodologies, USA, Germany, Austria.
Degrees
B.A., Anthropology University of Kansas 1990
M.A., Anthropology University of Kansas 1992
Ph.D., Anthropology University of Illinois 1996