12/17 – Book Talk: A Chosen Exile, Allyson Hobbs – Memphis, TN

A Chosen Exile

Book Talk with Author Allyson Hobbs

Thursday, December 17, 6-8pm, Hooks Hyde Hall, Free to the Public

Allyson Hobbs, a professor of History at Stanford University, has written a remarkable book entitled Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in America. This title has many key links to the museum’s history ranging from the era of Jim Crow to the most recent scandals. By the dawning of the civil rights era, more and more racially mixed Americans felt the loss of kin and community was too much to bear, that it was time to “pass out” and embrace a black identity. Although recent decades have witnessed an increasingly multiracial society and a growing acceptance of hybridity, the problem of race and identity remains at the center of public debate and emotionally fraught personal decisions.
Allyson Hobbs is a contributor to the New Yorker.com and the BBC World Service. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University and she received a Ph.D. with distinction from the University of Chicago. She teaches courses on American identity, African American history, African American women’s history, and twentieth century American history and culture.  She has won numerous teaching awards including the Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Prize, the Graves Award in the Humanities, and the St. Clair Drake Teaching Award.

Sponsored by the Slomo & Cindy Silvian Foundation.