Williams Hosts a Conversation with Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author Isabel Wilkerson

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., March 12, 2021—Isabel Wilkerson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Humanities Medal, will join Williams graduate Hari Ramesh ’11, a College Fellow in Social Studies at Harvard University, in an online conversation focused on Wilkerson’s latest book and hosted by Williams College. The event, which is free and open to the public, will be held on Tuesday, March 16, from 7 to 8 p.m.

Please use the following the link to join the webinar:

https://williams.zoom.us/j/93468756014?pwd=TkV6VkswQjZkSTJabGhSaVJmNzB6UT09

Passcode: 222146

Wilkerson is the author of The New York Times bestsellers, The Warmth of Other Suns and Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. A gifted storyteller, she captivates audiences with the universal human story of migration and reinvention, as well as the unseen hierarchies that have divided us as a nation, in order to find a way to transcend them. She has become an impassioned voice for demonstrating how history can help us understand ourselves, our country and our current era of upheaval.

Wilkerson won the Pulitzer Prize for her work as Chicago bureau chief of The New York Times in 1994, making her the first Black woman in the history of American journalism to win a Pulitzer Prize and the first African American to win for individual reporting in the history of American journalism.

Her latest book, Caste: The Origins of our Discontents, published in August 2020 to widespread critical acclaim, examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how a hierarchy of social divisions still defines our lives today. She brings the past’s complexities to vivid life through her passionate research and her profound gift for connecting with audiences of all backgrounds. Caste is being adapted into a Netflix film directed, written, and produced by Ava DuVernay.

This event is sponsored by the W. Ford Schumann ’50 Program in Democratic Studies as part of the program’s Race and Democracy series, now in its third year.

For more information, visit the events calendar on the Williams College website at events.williams.edu.

Published March 12, 2021