David Noble Lecture

David Noble was an American studies professor at the University of Minnesota who retired in 2009 after over 50 years of teaching. Noble made substantial contributions to the discipline of American studies.

Each spring, we present the annual David Noble Lecture in his honor, which features a groundbreaking scholar of American studies who offers fresh perspectives on our history and culture. 

Previous Noble Lectures

• April 2024: Shana Redmond, English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University: "No Weapon Formed Against Me: The Black Intermezzi of a Vigilante State"
• April 2023: Jason Ruiz, American Studies, University of Notre Dame: “Narco-Media: Latinidad, Popular Culture, and America’s War on Drugs”
• April 2022: Duchess Harris, American Studies, Macalester College: “Black Feminist Politics from Kennedy to Kamala”
• April 2021: E. Patrick Johnson, Northwestern University: "Honeypot: Black Southern Women Who Love Women"
• April 2019: Gaye Theresa Johnson, University of California, Los Angeles: "The Future of Radical History: Democracy, Love and the Metaphor of Two Worlds"
• April 2018: Niigaanwewidam James Sinclair, University of Manitoba: "How Anishinaabeg Literatures Can (and Will) Save the World
• May 2017: Roderick Ferguson, University of Illinois: "The Bookshop of Black Queer Diaspora"
• April 2016: Robin D.G. Kelley, UCLA: "'A Female Candide’: U.S. Empire, Racial Cartographies, and the Education of Grace Halsell, 1952–1986"
• April 2015: Louise Erdrich: "Sugarbush Summer: Reflections, Readings and the Future of Snow"
• April 2014: Avery Gordon, UC Santa Barbara: "Running Away and Other Forms of Escape: Stories from the Hawthorne Archives”
• April 2013: Tiya Miles, Harvard University: "Detroit: Then and Now"
• April 2012: Ricardo Dominguez, UC San Diego: "Trans-Interventions: From Digital Zapatismo to Border Art Disturbances"
• April 2011: Thaddeus Russell, Occidental College: "A Renegade History of the United States"
• April 2010: Shelley Streeby, UC San Diego: "Archiving Black Transnational Modernity: Stereopticons, Scrapbooks and Social Movements”
• April 2009: Lisa Lowe, Yale University
• April 2008: Peter Rachleff, Macalester College: "Hard-Pressed in the Heartland: The Making, Unmaking, and Remaking of Minnesota's Labor Movement in the 20th and 21st Centuries"
• April 2007: Nan Enstad, UW Madison: "The Jim Crow Cigarette: Tracing Cultures of Transnational Capitalism Before World War II"