Gaye Theresa Johnson

Gaye Theresa Johnson is Associate Professor of African American Studies and Chicana and Chicano Studies at the University of California at Los Angeles. She writes and teaches on race, cultural politics, and freedom struggles. Her first book, published with University of California Press in 2013, is Spaces of Conflict, Sounds of Solidarity: Music, Race, and Spatial Entitlement, and is a history of social and spatial struggles in Los Angeles' Black and Brown communities.

Johnson's second book, Futures of Black Radicalism, was co-edited with Alex Lubin and published with Verso Press in 2017. It is a collection of writings about the Black Radical Tradition, both in tribute to and animated by the work of Cedric Robinson. Johnson is currently at work on two book projects. The first is titled Rings of Dissent: Boxing and the Performance of Rebellion, co-edited with sports scholars David J. Leonard and Rudy Mondragón. It studies the racial, gender, and cultural economies of boxing. She is also writing a single-author manuscript, These Walls Will Fall: Redefining Freedom in the 21st Century, which connects studies and practices of transnational migration and economies, prisoners' rights, environmental justice, and art. It considers the academy's role in the complex praxis of what is often called "community-engaged scholarship."

Johnson is President of the Board of the Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy (CAUSE), and an advisory board member for the Goldin Institute and the Rosenberg Fund for Children.

Her proudest achievement is being a mother to her 8-year old daughter and being a part of the circle of friends and family that constitute the core of her life.