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

• 2026: Kareem Khubchandani, Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies, Tufts University: "Auntologies: Queer Aesthetics and South Asian Aunties"
• 2025: Mejdulene Shomali, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality, Williams College: "Sahq, Dirt, Shaheed: Queer Poetics and Palestinian Resistance"
• 2024: Shana Redmond, English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University: "No Weapon Formed Against Me: The Black Intermezzi of a Vigilante State"
• 2023: Jason Ruiz, American Studies, University of Notre Dame: “Narco-Media: Latinidad, Popular Culture, and America’s War on Drugs”
• 2022: Duchess Harris, American Studies, Macalester College: “Black Feminist Politics from Kennedy to Kamala”
• 2021: E. Patrick Johnson, Northwestern University: "Honeypot: Black Southern Women Who Love Women"
• 2019: Gaye Theresa Johnson, University of California, Los Angeles: "The Future of Radical History: Democracy, Love and the Metaphor of Two Worlds"
• 2018: Niigaanwewidam James Sinclair, University of Manitoba: "How Anishinaabeg Literatures Can (and Will) Save the World
• 2017: Roderick Ferguson, University of Illinois: "The Bookshop of Black Queer Diaspora"
• 2016: Robin D.G. Kelley, UCLA: "'A Female Candide’: U.S. Empire, Racial Cartographies, and the Education of Grace Halsell, 1952–1986"
• 2015: Louise Erdrich: "Sugarbush Summer: Reflections, Readings and the Future of Snow"
• 2014: Avery Gordon, UC Santa Barbara: "Running Away and Other Forms of Escape: Stories from the Hawthorne Archives”
• 2013: Tiya Miles, Harvard University: "Detroit: Then and Now"
• 2012: Ricardo Dominguez, UC San Diego: "Trans-Interventions: From Digital Zapatismo to Border Art Disturbances"
• 2011: Thaddeus Russell, Occidental College: "A Renegade History of the United States"
• 2010: Shelley Streeby, UC San Diego: "Archiving Black Transnational Modernity: Stereopticons, Scrapbooks and Social Movements”
• 2009: Lisa Lowe, Yale University
• 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"
• 2007: Nan Enstad, UW Madison: "The Jim Crow Cigarette: Tracing Cultures of Transnational Capitalism Before World War II"