PINEHURST — On Thursday, Sept. 15, 2022, at 7 p.m. the Ruth Pauley Lecture Series will kick off its 35th consecutive season of free lectures from renowned thinkers, statesmen, and arts and entertainment figures with Pulitzer Prize-winning author and noted speaker, Dr. Marcia Chatelain on the topic “Hungering for Change: Food Justice and Civil Rights.”
In 2021, Chatelain was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in History for her book “Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America,” which also won a James Beard Foundation Book Writing Award. She also authored “Southside Girls: Growing Up in the Great Migration,” which chronicles Chicago’s great migration through the lens of black girls.
Chatelain is a Chicago native. She graduated from the University of Missouri in 2001 with degrees in journalism and religious studies and then worked as the resident scholar at the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation. She went on to receive her A.M. and Ph.D from Brown University in 2008, and was awarded the University of California-Santa Barbara Black Studies Dissertation Fellowship. She worked as the Reach for Excellence Assistant Professor of Honors and African Studies at the University of Oklahoma Honors College before becoming a Provost’s Distinguished Associate Professor, and now Professor of History and African American Studies at Georgetown University. Chatelain is a National Endowment for the Humanities faculty fellow and Andrew Carnegie Foundation fellow.
In 2014, in the wake of civil unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, Chatelain created the #FergusonSyllabus providing a space for educators to discuss integrating the events that happened in Ferguson into classrooms. The success of this has inspired other crowdsourced syllabi to respond to national tragedies, and in 2016 the “Chronicle of Higher Education” named Chatelain a Top Influencer in academics in recognition of the success of #FergusonSyllabus.
As of August 2020, she has hosted the Slate podcast “The Waves” on feminism, gender and popular culture, and remains a frequent lecturer on race, culture and women’s issues.
The lecture will be held in the Bradford Performing Arts Center in Owens Auditorium on the Sandhills Community College campus. The lecture will be preceded with a cash bar in the auditorium lobby, and will be followed by a Q&A session and a reception. All Ruth Pauley lectures are free and open to the public. For more information, visit www.ruthpauley.org
