Craig Steven Wilder, historian and author of the award-winning book Ebony & Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities, will speak in Hynson Lounge in Hodson Hall on September 28. The event, which is co-sponsored by the Sophie Kerr Lecture Series and the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, starts at 4:30 p.m. and is free and open to the public.

A historian of American institutions and ideas, Wilder’s most recent book is the award-winning Ebony & Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities (Bloomsbury, 2013), which Kirkus Reviews named one of the best nonfiction books of the year. It inspired the Grammy Award-winning artist Esperanza Spalding’s song, “Ebony and Ivy” in Emily’s D+Evolution (Concord Records, 2016). A book titled Ebony & Ivy was featured in the film Dear White People (Code Red Films, 2014). He is also the author of A Covenant with Color: Race and Social Power in Brooklyn (Columbia University Press, 2001) and In the Company of Black Men: The African Influence on African American Culture in New York City (New York University Press, 2001).

Wilder began his career as a community organizer in the South Bronx. He is a senior fellow at the Bard Prison Initiative, where he has served as a visiting professor, a commencement speaker, and an academic advisor. He has taught at Dartmouth College, Williams College, and Long Island University, and he has been a visiting professor at the New School University and University College London. He is currently the Barton L. Weller Professor of History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Wilder will also be speaking with Washington College faculty, staff, and students during a panel discussion at 10 am on Friday, September 29, in the Casey Academic Center Commons Room.

For more information on this and other English Department and Sophie Kerr events, visit the website at www.washcoll.edu/departments/english/events.php, or view our annual Literary Events Calendar brochure here: www.washcoll.edu/live/files/7406-2017-2018. For more information on the C.V. Starr Center, visit www.washcoll.edu/centers/starr/.