University Park, Pa. -- Mary Pattillo, professor of sociology and African-American studies, and chair of the Department of Sociology at Northwestern University, will speak on "The Black Bourgeoisie Meets the Truly Disadvantaged" at 8 p.m. Monday, April 6, in 112 Kern Building on Penn State's University Park campus. Pattillo also will give a colloquium titled "Transforming Public Housing: The Mixes Blessings of Mixed-Income Communities" at noon the same day in 302 Pond. She will speak as the 2009 Francis M. Sim memorial lecturer.
Pattillo's 1999 ethnography of a Chicago suburb, "Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril Among the Black Middle Class," won the Oliver Cromwell Cox Best Book Award from the American Sociological Association. She describes her most recent book, "Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City," as an examination of the "simultaneous processes of low-income housing construction and gentrification in a black Chicago neighborhood." Pattillo has written on a number of other topics, including the black church, and she is co-editor of "Imprisoning America: The Social Effects of Mass Incarceration."
In addition to her scheduled lectures, there will be opportunities for small group meetings or appointments during Pattillo's April 6-8 stay. For more information, please contact Marylee Taylor at taylor@POP.PSU.EDU.