Jasmin Young

University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of African American Studies

Jasmin A. Young is a University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of African American Studies. She is currently developing her manuscript, Black Women with Guns: Armed Resistance in the Black Freedom Struggle. This work fundamentally rethinks the history of the Black Freedom Movement by placing Black women’s armed activity at the center of the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements. The project explores the extensive practice and advocacy of armed resistance by Black women.

Dr. Young’s research interests center broadly on the intellectual history of Black women, state violence and resistance, and radical Black feminism. These interests are woven into her scholarship, professional service, and passion projects. She co-edited the Black Power Encyclopedia: From “Black is Beautiful” to Urban Uprisings (Greenwood Press, 2018). This two-volume reference offers a cross-disciplinary and broad approach to the movement and explores the emergence and evolution of the Black Power Movement in the United States. Her article “Detroit’s Red: Black Radical Detroit and the Political Development of Malcolm X,” on the political development of Malcolm X appeared in SOULS: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society, Vol. 12 No. 1 (2010). Dr. Young is currently working collaboratively with Lishan AZ, a game designer at the University of California, Davis on a historically-based educational game focused on Black women’s history. The first installation in the series, completed in 2017, is entitled “Tracking Ida.” Dr. Young works on the project as a historical consultant and writer.

Dr. Young is a recipient of the Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship. Selections from her manuscript have been presented at several academic meetings, including the National Council of Black Studies, the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, the American Historical Association, and the American Studies Association. She holds a B.A. in Africana Studies from California State University, Northridge, an M.A. in African American Studies from Columbia University and an M.S.c in Gender Studies from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Dr. Young received her Ph.D. in History from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in 2018.