Book Talk & Signing with Jelani Cobb in Conversation with Christopher Lebron

Description

Jelani Cobb, a professor at the Columbia Journalism School and staff writer at The New Yorker, and Chris Lebron, an associate professor of philosophy at Johns Hopkins, will discuss "The Matter of Black Lives: Writing from the New Yorker." This event is hosted by the Center for Africana Studies.

All in-person events at Johns Hopkins must follow university COVID-19 policies. See current guidelines online. This is a hybrid event; to attend virtually, please register in advance.

Jelani Cobb joined the Columbia Journalism School faculty in 2016. He has contributed to The New Yorker since 2012 and became a staff writer in 2015. He is the recipient of the 2015 Sidney Hillman Award for Opinion and Analysis writing and writes frequently about race, politics, history, and culture. He was most recently an associate professor of history and director of the Africana Studies Institute at the University of Connecticut where he specialized in post-Civil War African American history, 20th-century American politics, and the history of the Cold War. Cobb is also a recipient of fellowships from the Fulbright and Ford Foundations. He is the author of The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress as well as To the Break of Dawn: A Freestyle on the Hip Hop Aesthetic. His articles and essays have appeared in the Washington Post, The New Republic, Essence, Vibe, The Progressive, and TheRoot.com. His collection The Devil and Dave Chappelle and Other Essays was published in 2007. He has also contributed to a number of anthologies including In Defense of Mumia, Testimony, Mending the World, and Beats, Rhymes, and Life. He is editor of The Essential Harold Cruse: A Reader. Born and raised in Queens, New York. He is a graduate of Howard University and Rutgers University where he received his doctorate in American history.

Chris Lebron is an associate professor of philosophy at Johns Hopkins. He specializes in political philosophy, social theory, the philosophy of race, and democratic ethics. His first book, The Color of Our Shame: Race and Justice in Our Time (OUP 2013) won the American Political Science Association Foundations of Political Theory First Book Prize. His second book The Making of Black Lives Matter: A Brief History of An Idea (OUP 2017) offers a brief intellectual history of the black lives matter social movement. Lebron is the winner of the 2018 Hiett Prize in the Humanities which recognizes a "career devoted to the humanities and whose work shows extraordinary promise to have a significant impact on contemporary culture." In addition to his scholarly publications, Lebron has been an active public intellectual, writing numerous times for The New York Times's philosophy column, The Stone, Boston Review, The Nation, The Atlantic, and Billboard Magazine.