Tressie McMillan Cottom to Deliver Hatfield Lecture

The Lafayette libraries are pleased to announce that on Tuesday, March 23 we will virtually host our annual John L. Hatfield ‘67 Lecture featuring award-winning author, researcher, educator, and cultural critic, Tressie McMillan Cottom. Her work has been recognized nationally and internationally for the urgency and depth of her incisive critical analysis of technology, higher education, class, race, and gender. In 2019, Cottom released Thick: and Other Essays, a collection which has been described as “essential,” and the Chicago Tribune calls Cottom, “the author you need to read now.” Dorothy Roberts compares reading it to “holding a mirror to your soul and to that of America.” Thick was the winner of the Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize and was a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award. Cottom serves on dozens of academic and philanthropic boards and publishes widely on issues of inequality, work, higher education and technology. She is an associate professor in the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life (UNC). Cottom also co-hosts Hear to Slay with Roxane Gay, a podcast with an intersectional perspective on celebrity, culture, politics, art, life, love, and more.