The subjects of race and caste systems based on race have long bedeviled societies, particularly our own. On Thursday, April 28 at 8 p.m., Fairfield University’s Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts’ Open Visions Forum will welcome New York Times best-selling author Isabel Wilkerson as she presents “Caste: Examining Race, Culture and Consequences.” This virtual lecture is part of university’s “Women and Leadership” series, sponsored by Bank of America.
Wilkerson is the author of the critically acclaimed book “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent.” Her lecture invites attendees to discover the inner workings of an American hierarchy that goes far beyond the confines of race, class or gender.
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Humanities Medal, Wilkerson is a leading figure in narrative nonfiction and American journalism. In “Caste,” she layers analysis with story to explore the structure of an unspoken system of human ranking and reveals how our lives are still restricted by what divided us centuries ago.
In addition to “Caste,” Wilkerson is the author of another Times best seller, “The Warmth of Other Suns,” for which she won the National Book Critics Circle Award. She received the Pulitzer Prize for her work as Chicago Bureau chief of The Times, making her the first Black woman in the history of American journalism to win a Pulitzer and the first African American to win for individual reporting.
Wilkerson has lectured on narrative nonfiction at the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University and has taught at Princeton, Emory and Boston universities. She has lectured at more than 200 colleges and universities across the United States, Europe and Asia. Her work has garnered seven honorary degrees, most recently from Bates College and Southern Methodist University. She has appeared on national programs such as CBS’ “60 Minutes,” NPR’s “Fresh Air,” “NBC Nightly News” and on MSNBC, CNN, C-SPAN and others.
Tickets are $30; $15 for Quick Center Members and are available for purchase at quickcenter.com. To become a Quick Center Member, you can also call the box office at 203-254-4010 or toll free at 1-877-ARTS-396.
