Biography

Kristoffer (Kit) Smemo is a historian of labor, politics, and popular culture in the United States. His first book, Making Republicans Liberal: Social Struggle and the Politics of Compromise, explores how working people wrung concessions from their political opponents across the mid-twentieth century United States.

Kit teaches classes on how workers shape public policy, labor and the environment under racial capitalism, and the social history of punk rock. He is currently working on Black Flag’s Amerika: A Countercultural History of the New Right, a book about the politics of punk in post-industrial Southern California. He comes to UCLA with a PhD in History from UC Santa Barbara.

Courses Taught

LBR STD 105: U.S. Working-Class Movements

LBR STD 174: Labor and Employment Law

LBR STD 186: Political Economy of Punk

LBR STD 188: Laboring Public Policy