An Overview of Far-Right Violent Extremism and How Women are Involved by Dean Kathleen Blee, University of Pittsburgh

This talk provides an overview of far-right violent extremism globally, with particular attention to its growth in the United States and Europe. It will explain its various forms over time and across nations, as well as its ideology, means of communication and networks, strategies and goals, and the spaces through which it seeks to recruit new adherents and motivate supporters to enact violent and terroristic actions. It also focuses on the changing role of women in far-right extremism and far-right terroristic violence.

Dean Kathleen Blee is Bettye J. and Ralph E. Bailey Dean at Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts & Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh and a distinguished scholar. She has published 79 journal articles, encyclopaedia entries and book chapters. She has published three edited or co-edited books and has four scholarly monographs (one co-authored) published. Her first monograph, Women in the Klan: Racism and Gender in the 1920s, was published by the University of California Press in 1991. Her co-authored book with Dwight Billings, The Road to Poverty: The Making of Wealth and Hardship in Appalachia, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2000. Inside Organized Racism: Women in the Hate Movement was published by the University of California Press in 2002. Blee's next monograph, Making Democracy: How Activist Groups Form, was published in 2012 by Oxford University Press. Her latest book, Understanding Racist Activism: Theory, Methods and Research, was published in 2017.