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Best-selling author, political commentator and professor Melissa Harris-Lacewell will speak on Oct. 14 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Best-selling author, political commentator and professor Melissa Harris-Lacewell will speak on Oct. 14 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The free public talk will be at 7 p.m. in the Hitchcock Multipurpose Room of UNC’s Sonja Haynes Stone for Black Culture and History, located at 150 South Road.

Harris-Lacewell, who will discuss the interplay of race and politics in America, wrote “Barbershops, Bibles, and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought” (Princeton University Press, 2004). The book won an award from the American Political Science Association and was honored by the National Conference of Black Political Scientists.

She is writing her next book, “Sister Citizen: A Text For Colored Girls Who’ve Considered Politics When Being Strong Wasn’t Enough” (Yale University Press).

As an associate professor of politics and African-American studies at Princeton, Harris-Lacewell researches the challenges facing contemporary black Americans and the creative ways in which they respond to these challenges.

She contributes regularly to MSNBC, commenting on U.S. elections, racial issues, religious questions and gender concerns on programs including “The Rachel Maddow Show” and “Countdown with Keith Olbermann.” She also writes a monthly column, “Sister Citizen,” for The Nation.

Harris-Lacewell received her bachelor’s degree in English from Wake Forest University, her doctorate in political science from Duke University and an honorary doctorate from Meadville Lombard Theological School in Chicago.

Her talk will be the 18th annual Sonja Haynes Stone Memorial Lecture honoring the center’s namesake.

The late Stone advocated for the center, directed the curriculum in African and Afro-American studies and was an adviser to the Black Student Movement in the late 1970s. The annual lecture brings to campus a black woman who is distinguished by her scholarship, commitment to social justice and public service.

Previous Stone Memorial lecturers have included Farai Chideya, Julianne Malveaux, Angela Davis, Congresswoman Eva Clayton, Kathleen Cleaver, Sonia Sanchez, Atallah Shabazz and Alfre Woodard.

For more information on Harris-Lacewell, visit http://www.melissaharrislacewell.com. For more information on the Oct. 14 program, call the center at (919) 962-9001 or visit http://www.unc.edu/depts/stonecenter.

Photo: http://uncnews.unc.edu/images/stories/news/government/2010/mhl2010.jpg

Stone Center contact: Gordon Ryan, (919) 962-7265, gryan@unc.edu
News Services contact: LJ Toler, (919) 962-8589

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