The Richardson American Studies Lecture Series
Since 1987, the Richardson American Studies Lecture Series has been a fixture of intellectual life at Georgetown, with scholars, journalists, politicians, and public figures reflecting on their work in the fields of U.S. history, politics, and culture. The lecture is the highlight of the American Studies calendar and one of the most treasured lecture events hosted at Georgetown.
The Richardson American Studies Lecture Series was created through the generous gift of Mrs. Eudora Richardson C’84.
Nina Simone Saved Our Lives: How A Single Song Changed The World with Dr. Salamishah Tillet (Henry Rutgers Professor of Africana Studies and Creative Writing at Rutgers University, Newark)
Tuesday, April 15, 5:30 – 7:00pm ET, Riggs Library (and on Zoom)
Salamishah Tillet is the Henry Rutgers Professor of Africana Studies and Creative Writing at Rutgers University, Newark, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning contributing critic-at-large at the New York Times. She is also the director of Express Newark, a center for art, design, and digital storytelling in Newark, NJ, where people co-create and collaborate to advocate for social change. Tillet is the author of Sites of Slavery: Citizenship and Racial Democracy in the Post-Civil Rights Imagination and, most recently, In Search of the Color Purple: The Story of an American Masterpiece. Her writing has appeared in several publications, including Aperture, The Atlantic, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, and Time. Tillet is completing All The Rage: Nina Simone and The World She Made.
This year’s lecture, “Nina Simone Saved Our Lives: How A Single Song Changed The World, ” explores the making and meaning of Nina Simone’s music in American culture. Sharing excerpts from her forthcoming book on this Civil Rights icon, Rutgers professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning NYTimes critic Salamishah Tillet reflects on how Simone’s 1966 song “Four Women” blurred the boundaries between biography and memoir, history and myth, public and private, and ultimately shaped Tillet’s very personal approach to telling Simone’s story today.