Pennington Lecture: Encounters
ENCOUNTERS: Historic Black Journalism and its Legacy
inspired by this year’s speaker
DR. JELANI COBB, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, NEW YORKER STAFF WRITER
Saturday, March 4, 2023
- 10:00am – 12:30pm, Community Room, 2nd Floor, Capital Community College (950 Main Street, Hartford)
- In-person only
- Free Saturday street parking
- Parking validation also available for the Morgan Street Garage (155 Morgan Street, bring ticket to CCC public safety for validation)
As a journalist and a historian, Jelani Cobb, this year’s Pennington Lecture speaker, has used public media to present deeply researched long-form journalism that highlights and engages pressing issues from police violence and reform to voting rights and critical race theory. He is a part of a long tradition of Black journalists who have done so.
Pennington Lecture: Encounters will re-visit both the particular space that Black writing has occupied as well as the themes and subjects that they engaged in order to highlight the long history and legacy of Black writing, Black journalists, and advocacy in and through the Black press.
Participants will read and discuss excerpts from historic Black newspapers, particularly those that are difficult to access today because of paywalls. Speeches and books by Black writers are readily available, but many of the publications can only be accessed through expensive databases. Pennington Lecture: Encounters will be an opportunity for participants to read excerpts from these publications and thus revisit writers and intellectuals who were prominent in their day and whose work, as Jelani says, are like ice sculptures—elegant and monumental, but fleeting in the public imagination.
Free and Open to the Public
Click here to Registe for Pennington Lecture: Encounters
*Participants are encouraged to attend Jelani Cobb’s Pennington Lecture on Thursday February 9th at the Wadsworth Atheneum at 6:00pm (also available as a livestream simulcast); however, attending the lecture is not necessary for taking part in this Encounters event.
Click here to Reserve Free Tickets for In-Person Event at the Wadsworth