14 Facts About Fred Moten

Fred Moten was born on 1962 and is an American cultural theorist, poet, and scholar whose work explores critical theory, black studies, and performance studies.

Fred Moten has published numerous poetry collections, including The Little Edges, The Feel Trio, B Jenkins, and Hughson's Tavern.

Fred Moten was born in Las Vegas in 1962 and was raised Catholic in the segregated black neighborhood on the western end of the city.

Fred Moten's parents were among the black families that made up the Great Migration, the period in US history when many black families moved from the Deep South to seek new prospects in the northern and western parts of the country.

Fred Moten's parents were originally from Louisiana and Arkansas, and after resettling in Las Vegas, his father found employment at the Las Vegas Convention Center, and his mother worked as a grade school teacher.

Fred Moten enrolled in Harvard University in 1980 hoping to pursue a degree in economics.

Fred Moten makes considerable intellectual contributions to the discourses of Black studies, poetry and poetics, critical race theory and contemporary American literature.

Fred Moten has been profiled by Harvard Magazine, The New Yorker, The Brooklyn Rail, and LitHub.

Fred Moten's work The Feel Trio, named after Cecil Taylor's trio with William Parker and Tony Oxley, was awarded the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and was a poetry finalist for the National Book Award.

Fred Moten received a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Roy Lichtenstein Award.

Fred Moten has served on numerous editorial boards including American Quarterly, Callaloo, Social Text, and Discourse.

Fred Moten has served on advisory boards for Issues in Critical Investigation at Vanderbilt University, the Critical Theory Institute at the University of California, Irvine, and was on the board of directors of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at City University of New York.

Fred Moten offers a theory of hapticality and to stay in debt to one another as a means of understanding one's own relationship to the world and to others.

In May 2024, Fred Moten gave a keynote lecture at an academic conference: "Jews and Black Theory: Conceptualizing Otherness in the Twenty-First Century," held at Harvard University.