Purchase College & Brooklyn Historical Society to Host Claudia Rankine & Alondra Nelson

Purchase College-SUNY and Brooklyn Historical Society will present Claudia Rankine and Alondra Nelson: In Conversation on Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2016 at 6:30 p.m. The program, which is free of charge and open to the public, will take place at the Brooklyn Historical Society, 128 Pierrepont Street, Brooklyn, NY. The event is part of the Durst Distinguished Lecture Series.

Poet Claudia Rankine was recently named a fellow of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and recipient of the highly prestigious MacArthur “Genius” award. She is Purchase College’s 2016-17 Roy and Shirley Durst Distinguished Chair in Literature, leading numerous programs throughout the academic year, including readings and workshops.

The author of five collections of poetry, Claudia Rankine is the Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry at Yale University. Her most recent book, Citizen: An American Lyric (2014), won, among many other awards, the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry, the PEN Open Book Award, the NAACP Image Award, and the LA Times Book Award for poetry.

Alondra Nelson is the Dean of Social Science and Professor of Sociology at Columbia University. In 2016, she published The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation After the Genome with Beacon Press. As an interdisciplinary social scientist, her lectures, books, and articles explore the intersections of science, medicine and social inequality.

“Claudia Rankine and Alondra Nelson have each changed how we think about history, race, and social inequality in ways that resonate deeply in contemporary America,” says Deborah Schwartz, President of the Brooklyn Historical Society. “They present narratives that challenge what we think we know is history. These are exactly the kinds of conversations we are proud to present at the Brooklyn Historical Society.”

Doors will open at 6:00 p.m. and the program will start at 6:30. Seating is on a first come, first served basis. For more information, please visit https://news.purchase.edu/nov-16-claudia-rankine-and-alondra-nelson-in-conversation/ or call 914.251.6550.

The Durst Distinguished Lecture Series and the Roy and Shirley Durst Distinguished Chair in Literature are funded by the Roy and Shirley Durst Distinguished Chair in Literature Endowment. The mission of the Durst programs is to infuse the experience and intellect of leading writers into the Purchase community, while providing diverse opportunities for these writers to interact with students and influence campus life.