The College of Information and Communications will host  Tressie McMillan Cottom, Ph.D., as part of its Inclusive Excellence Access and Engagement Series on Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. 

Cottom is an opinion columnist for the New York Times, award-winning author, renowned sociologist and cultural critic.

The Cottom engagement also includes an invite only session with journalism and mass communications students on opinion writing, sponsored by the School of Journalism and Mass Communications, and moderated by Director Damion Waymer, Ph.D.

“An Evening with Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom,” features a public lecture on “The Future of American Democracy,” illuminating a potentially massive social change as we approach an ever more consequential-election cycle.

A 2020 MacArthur Foundation Fellow, Cottom’s most recent book, Thick: And Other Essays, received the Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize and was a finalist for the 2019 National Book Award. She is an associate professor in the University of North Carolina School of Information and Library Science and a senior faculty researcher at the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life.

Nicole Cooke, Ph.D., the CIC and iSchool’s Augusta Baker endowed professor, will moderate the event that begins at 6:30 p.m. in the School of Journalism and Mass Communications auditorium, Room 106. A book-signing hosted by All Good Books and reception will follow the lecture, sponsored by the Augusta Baker Endowed Chair.