Intersectionality, Black Youth and Political Activism

Patricia Hill Collins

Renowned author and sociologist Patricia Hill to present Morgan Lecture 

Award-winning author and renowned sociologist Patricia Hill Collins will discuss intersectionality, black youth and political activism when she presents the Morgan Lecture at Dickinson on Thursday, Oct. 1, at 7 p.m. in the Anita Tuvin Schlechter (ATS) Auditorium. The program will be made available to the wider Dickinson community via live-stream. It is sponsored by the Morgan Fund and Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues as part of its semester-long theme—Inequality and Mass Incarceration in the United States—and Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty series.

Collins will examine how intersectional analyses shed light on black youth activism, patterns of the past and challenges that face contemporary youth. Intersectionality is a form of critical inquiry that demonstrates how race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, ability and national belonging, or citizenship shape one another. Intersectionality has been increasingly applied to a range of social issues and social phenomena.

Collins is a distinguished university professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park, and the Charles Phelps Taft professor emeritus of sociology in the Africana studies department at the University of Cincinnati. Her award-winning books include, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, which received both the Jessie Bernard Award of the American Sociological Association (ASA) and the C. Wright Mills Award of the Society for the Study of Social Problems; and Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism, which received ASA’s 2007 Distinguished Publication Award. Her next book, Intersectionality, co-authored with Sirma Bilge, will be published in 2016 as part of Polity Press’s Key Concepts Series. In 2008, Collins became the 100th president of the ASA and the first African-American woman elected to the position in the organization’s 104-year history.

The Morgan Lectureship series brings to campus a scholar in residence to meet informally with students and to deliver the Morgan Lecture on topics in the social sciences and humanities. This event is co-sponsored by the Division of Student Life, the Churchill Fund, and the departments of sociology, women’s & gender studies, Africana studies, American studies, anthropology, English, history, philosophy, and political science.

 

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Published September 28, 2015