About

Kathleen Belew is a historian, author, and teacher who specializes in the history of the present. She spent ten years researching and writing her first book, Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America, which explores how white power activists created a social movement through a common story about betrayal by the government, war, and its weapons, uniforms, and technologies. This movement united groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazi, and skinhead groups, mobilizing them to carry out escalating acts of violence culminating in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Belew's work highlights that this movement was never adequately confronted and remains a threat to American democracy. Her subsequent book, Home at the End of the World, focuses on her native Colorado in the 1990s, examining high-profile kidnappings, murders, right-wing religious ideology, and a mass shooting that exposed rifts in America’s social fabric and changed societal relationships with place, violence, and politics. Belew has spoken extensively about her research on various media outlets, including The Rachel Maddow Show, The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, AC 360 with Anderson Cooper, and has been featured in documentaries such as Homegrown Hate: The War Among Us and Documenting Hate: New American Nazis. She is an Associate Professor of History at Northwestern University, having earned tenure at the University of Chicago in 2021 after seven years there. Her research has received support from several foundations, and her teaching centers on themes including the history of the present, conservatism, race, gender, violence, identity, and the meaning of war. Belew is also a co-editor and contributor to A Field Guide to White Supremacy and has contributed essays to Myth America and The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Law
• History
• Psychology
• Genealogy
• Geology
• Geography
• Psychoanalysis

Selected publications

• Militia Groups Were Hiding in Plain Sight on January 6; They’re Still Dangerous

  University of Georgia Press eBooks · 2024-04-15

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• 17 FLAME AND STEEL INSIDE THE CAPITOL

  2024-02-15

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Flame and Steel inside the Capitol

  2023-12-01

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  This chapter examines the long history of conspiratorial belief systems in the white power movement, a broad alliance of militant right activists active from the late 1970s to the present. It also examines the category of conspiracy and its efficacy, or lack thereof, in the criminal prosecution of such groups. Seditious conspiracy, or the organized attempt to overthrow the government, has featured in both white power tactics and in attempts to hold such activists accountable for criminal behavior, ranging from a 1987–88 seditious conspiracy trial in Fort Smith, Arkansas to the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol.

  PublisherDOI

• White power movements in US history have often relied on veterans – and not on lone wolves

  2023-04-25

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• FLAME AND STEEL INSIDE THE CAPITOL

  2023-12-01 · 1 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Militant Whiteness in the Age of Trump

  Princeton University Press eBooks · 2022 · 11 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Geology
  • Political Science
  PublisherDOI

• 5 Militant Whiteness in the Age of Trump

  Princeton University Press eBooks · 2022 · 1 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Political Science
  • Law
  PublisherDOI

• Conclusion

  2021-10-02

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• There Are No Lone Wolves:

  University of California Press eBooks · 2021 · 5 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Psychology
  • Geography
  • Genealogy
  PublisherDOI

• Thoughts on the Associated Press Stylebook

  University of California Press eBooks · 2021

  1st authorCorresponding
  • History
  • Psychoanalysis
  • Psychology
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Jinah Kim

  2 shared

• Khaled A. Beydoun

  2 shared

• Ramón A. Gutiérrez

  2 shared

• Adam Goodman

  2 shared

• Cassie Miller

  2 shared

• Nicole Hemmer

  2 shared

• Emily Gorcenski

  2 shared

• Carly Goodman

  York University

  2 shared

Labs

• Material History LabPI

Awards & honors

• Chauncey and Marion Deering McCormick Foundation support
• Andrew W. Mellon Foundation support
• Jacob K. Javits Foundation support
• Dean's Medalist in the Humanities (University of Washington)