Dr. Keidrick Roy

Intellectual Historian & Political Theorist

Dartmouth College

Keidrick Roy is an assistant professor of Government at Dartmouth College and author of American Dark Age: Racial Feudalism and the Rise of Black Liberalism (Bookshop), a study of how medieval legacies haunt U.S. liberal democracy. American Dark Age received the Best Book in American Political Thought Award (American Political Science Association) and the Best Book in Intellectual History Prize (Society for U.S. Intellectual History), among others. Keidrick teaches courses on the history of American political thought and researches the evolution of core concepts such as liberalism, nationalism, and conservatism in the United States from the Revolutionary era to the present. His interdisciplinary work foregrounds African American intellectual traditions in rethinking current debates over patriotism, religion, and civic optimism.

Keidrick’s scholarly essays appear or are forthcoming in Modern Intellectual History, New Literary History, English Literary History, American Political Thought, and other publication venues. His public history writing appears in America: The Atlas, published in 2023 by Smithsonian Books & Thunder Bay Press (Dutch translation forthcoming in 2026). Additionally, his public service and scholarship have been featured by outlets such as CBS Sunday Morning, Salon.com, the National Football League, and HBO.

Keidrick (pronounced KEY-drick) earned his Ph.D. in American Studies from Harvard University, where he was also elected to the Harvard Society of Fellows. His dissertation, “Jefferson’s Map, Douglass’s Territory: The Black Reconstruction of Enlightenment in America, 1773-1865,” won Harvard’s DeLancey K. Jay Prize for the best work across the University “upon any subject relating to the history or development of constitutional government and free institutions in the United States or Great Britain or any other part of the English-speaking world at any period of history.” It also won Harvard’s Helen Choate Bell Prize for best dissertation on any subject in American literature. 

Additionally, Keidrick has been committed to the work of museum curation and documentary film production to encourage public reflection and dialogue. At the American Writers Museum in Chicago, he was the lead curator for Dark Testament, an exhibition that put the writings of African Americans from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement in conversation with contemporary Black writers and thinkers. He has also served as an exhibition curator for Frederick Douglass’s writings and speeches. At Harvard University’s Houghton Library, Keidrick curated an exhibition on the Nazi racial state, which debuted in 2022. In addition, he is the executive producer of We Are Here Too, a documentary film on race and art in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, which is featured in the 2023 SR: Socially Relevant Film Festival in New York City. 

An Outstanding Academy Educator honoree as a former Instructor of English at the United States Air Force Academy, an award-winning Teaching Fellow at Harvard, and a former military nuclear operations officer, Keidrick has received research support from the Ford Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Pat Tillman Foundation, and Harvard’s Center for American Political Studies. He also served as a Faculty Associate at Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics.

Contact Keidrick: keidrick@dartmouth.edu or view his CV using the page navigation link.