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Lecture examines King's 'crossover' appeal
Posted October 17, 2008; 02:18 p.m.
Barnard College sociologist Jonathan Rieder will discuss his research on the notion of Martin Luther King Jr. as a "crossover" artist appealing to both black and white audiences in a lecture at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 22, in 120 Lewis Library.
Rieder's lecture is titled "'I'm Gonna Be a Negro Tonight': Martin Luther King's Preaching in the Black Pulpit."
Rieder's research centers on sociology of culture; race, pluralism and ethnicity in the United States; and politics and language. He is completing a book on the social organization of moral argument that focuses on King as a crossover artist who defined a new vision of citizenship as he shifted between performances of "white" and "black" talk.
Rieder is the author of "Canarsie: The Jews and Italians of Brooklyn Against Liberalism" and the editor of "The Fractious Nation: Unity and Division in Contemporary American Life." He was the founding co-editor of CommonQuest: The Magazine of Black-Jewish Relations.
The event is part of the Princeton Lectures in Religion and Ethics series sponsored by the Center for the Study of Religion.