This roundtable centers on the interplay between the personal and the social, exploring how personal narratives, family histories, and intimate encounters with structural injustices illuminate broader societal problems. The authors’ works span issues of environmental crisis, incarceration, addiction, mental health, and urban violence, yet all ground their social critiques in deeply personal storytelling.

Reception and book signing to follow. 

*The first 100 people to register and attend the event will receive a free book authored by one of the speakers! 

Sponsorship of an event does not constitute institutional endorsement of external speakers or views presented.

Speakers:

Laurence Ralph
William D. Zabel ’58 Professor of Human Rights; Professor of Anthropology and Public Affairs, Princeton University
Author of Sito: An American Teenager and the City that Failed Him

Angela Garcia
Professor of Anthropology, Stanford University
Author of The Way That Leads Among the Lost: Life, Death, and Hope in Mexico City’s Anexos

Antonia Hylton 
Correspondent for NBC News and MSNBC
Author of Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum

Reuben Jonathan Miller
Associate Professor, Crown Family School and the Department of Race, Diaspora and Indigeneity, University of Chicago
Author of Halfway Home: Race, Punishment, and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration

 

Moderator:

Lucas Bessire
Professor, Colorado School of Mines
Stanley Kelley, Jr., Visiting Professor for Distinguished Teaching in the Department of Anthropology
Author of Running Out: In Search of Water on the High Plains