Sociologist, Author Elijah Anderson to Deliver Lecture, "Poor, Young, Black, and Male: A Case for National Action?" At Pitt's Center on Race and Social Problems

PITTSBURGH-Elijah Anderson, a sociologist who has dedicated his life's work to studying race and poverty in the inner city, will deliver a free public lecture at the University of Pittsburgh's Center on Race and Social Problems (CRSP) from noon to 1:30 p.m. April 5 in the School of Social Work Conference Center, 2017 Cathedral of Learning, 4200 Fifth Ave., Oakland.

The talk by Anderson, the Charles and William Day Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences and professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, is titled "Poor, Young, Black, and Male: A Case for National Action?" and is part of the CRSP Reed Smith Spring 2007 Speaker Series. Lunch will be provided, and registration is not required. For more information, call 412-624-7382.

Anderson is the author of "A Place on the Corner: A Study of Black Street Corner Men" (University of Chicago Press, 1978, 2004), "The Code of the Street: Decency, Violence and the Moral Life of the Inner City" (W. W. Norton, 1999), and Streetwise: Race, Class, and Change in an Urban Community" (University of Chicago Press, 1990). "Streetwise" won the Robert E. Park Award for the best book in the area of urban sociology from the American Sociological Association. Anderson has written many articles on the Black experience and authored the introduction to the republication of W.E.B. DuBois' "The Philadelphia Negro" (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996). Like DuBois, Anderson is an ethnographer, and he has become a fixture in the inner city communities he has written about: He has observed, talked to people, spent time in housing projects, frequented stores, and conducted focus groups of young men, students, parents, and teachers, to, in Anderson's words, "get an understanding of what the world meant to them."

A winner of the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching at Penn, Anderson is director of the Philadelphia Ethnography Project, associate editor of "Qualitative Sociology" and other professional journals, a member of the board of directors of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, and the past vice president of the American Sociological Association.

Anderson has three degrees in sociology-the B.A. degree from Indiana University at Bloomington, the M.A. degree from the University of Chicago, and the Ph.D. degree from Northwestern University, where he was a Ford Foundation Fellow.

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