January 10th, 2012 
Every year in January, Emory University honors the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.. Known as King Week, the university hosts a variety of community service projects, celebrations, and speaking engagements. This year’s keynote speaker is none other than Melissa Harris-Perry, professor of political science at Tulane University, MSNBC contributor, and columnist for The Nation. On January 17, join students and community members as Harris-Perry presents “King’s Legacy and the New Civil Rights Frontiers.” The speech, located in Cannon Chapel, concludes with a reception and book signing in Brooks Hall.
Melissa Harris-Perry (Photo Credit: melissaharrisperry.com)
Harris-Perry recently published the well-received Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America, which explores the preconceptions that shape the politics of African American women. She won the 2005 W.E.B. Du Bois Book Award for her first book, Barbershops, Bibles, and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought. Her monthly column, Sister Citizen, runs in the magazine The Nation.
At Tulane University, Harris-Perry is the founding director of the Cooper Project on Gender, Race, and Politics in the South. Through her academic research, she explores the challenges African Americans continue to face along with the ways communities and individuals have responded. In 2009, she became the youngest scholar to deliver the W.E.B. Du Bois Lectures at Harvard University and the youngest woman to deliver the prestigious Ware Lecture. She received her B.A. in English from Wake Forest University and her Ph.D. in political science from Duke University. She also studied theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York.
Sister Citizen (Photo Credit: Yale University Press)
WHEN: January 17, 2012 at 4 p.m.
WHERE:
Cannon Chapel
515 S. Kilgo Circle
Atlanta, Georgia, 30322
Ph. 404-727-6123
TICKETS: Free admission. Open to the public with limited seating.
