BIOGRAPHY
Karin L. Stanford, Ph.D. is a Political Science and Africana Studies professor at California State University, Northridge (CSUN). Before joining the faculty at CSUN in 2003, where she served as Chair of the Pan African Studies Department and Associate Dean of the College of Humanities in subsequent years, Dr. Stanford was a faculty member in the Department of Political Science at the University of Georgia.
Dr. Stanford specializes in African American Politics and Social Movements, International Relations, Public Policy, and Black Los Angeles. Her teaching areas also include Hip Hop Politics. As a scholar, Dr. Stanford has received several awards and recognition for her publications, including the Choice Magazine’s Outstanding Reference/Academic Book Award in 2009 for If We Must Die: African
American Voices on War and Peace (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.) and a 2003 NAACP Image Award nomination for her co-authored book with Ollie Johnson III, Ph.D., Black Political Organizations in the Post-Civil Rights Era (Rutgers University Press, 2002). She is also a co-editor of the Black Power Encyclopedia: From “Black is Beautiful to Urban Uprisings,” published by ABC-CLIO Greenwood Press in 2018, which has received several awards, including the 2019 Outstanding Reference Source from the Reference and User Services Association—RUSA; 2019 Top 10 Diverse Adult Books - Nonfiction—Booklist; and Best Reference Book of 2018—Library Journal, and more. Earlier in her career, her 1997 publication, Beyond the Boundaries: Reverend Jesse Jackson in International Affairs (State University of New York Press), won the National Conference of Black Political Scientists Outstanding Book Award in 1998.
Her work in Hip Hop scholarship leads with her article, “Keepin’ it Real in Hip Hop Politics: A Political Perspective of Tupac Shakur,” published in the Journal of Black Studies was one of the most-read articles of 2011. The Shakur article was followed by Higher Learning: Hip Hop in the Ivory Tower, which she co-edited with Charles E. Jones in 2018 (Baltimore: Black Classics Press). In 2020, an exhibit curated by Dr. Stanford and Keith Rice, “From Selma to Montgomery: The Voting Registration Campaigns of 1963 and 1965,” debuted at the Soraya Center for Performing Arts at CSUN.
Most recently, she has focused on the experiences of African Americans in Los Angeles. She co-authored the book, Nine Lives of a Black Panther: A Story of Survival with Wayne Pharr, a former member of the Southern California Chapter of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (Lawrence Hill Books, 2014) and published African Americans in Los Angeles with the Institute for Arts and Media in 2010 (Arcadia Press). The documentary short she directed, “Los Angeles: Displacement in Utopia,” became an official selection of the Pan African Film Festival in 2020.
As a cancer survivor, Dr. Stanford has integrated health equity into her research and community work. She published a groundbreaking book, Breaking the Silence: Inspirational Stories of Black Cancer Survivors (Hilton Publishing) which features the stories of African Americans who have been diagnosed with cancer. Although the stories are personal, they encompass information about disease prevention, treatment options, and inequality in health care. She has also served as a consumer review for the Department of Defense, U.S. Army Medical Research and Material Command, Congressional Directed Medical Research Programs. As a Consumer Reviewer, Dr. Stanford has reviewed more than 60 scientific proposals on breast cancer research.
Dr. Stanford is a former Congressional Black Caucus Fellow and Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She currently serves on the National Conference of Black Studies (NCBS) board, Special Projects Director of the Tom & Ethel Bradley Center (CSUN), and on the advisory board of the California Black Women’s Health Project and the editorial board of the International Journal of Africana Studies. Additionally, Dr. Stanford is a proud member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated and SVP of Rainbow Child Productions, founded by her daughter, Ashley Jackson.
