Acclaimed Yale Sociologist Addresses Racial Dynamics in America At Pitt Lecture April 6

PITTSBURGH—Elijah Anderson, award-winning author, scholar, and sociologist, will discuss inner-city race relations in a lecture at noon April 6, 2432 Posvar Hall, 230 S. Bouquet St., Oakland. 

The talk, titled “The Cosmopolitan Canopy: Race and Civility in Everyday Life,” is free and open to the public; lunch will be provided. 

Anderson is the William K. Lanman Jr. Professor of Sociology at Yale University, where he teaches and directs the Urban Ethnography Project. He defines the “cosmopolitan canopy” as the urban island of civility that exists among the ghettos, suburbs, and ethnic enclaves where segregation is the norm. Anderson says that under this canopy diverse peoples can come together and, for the most part, get along. His pathbreaking study of this phenomenon suggests a new perspective on the complexities of present-day race relations and reveals unique opportunities for cross-cultural interaction. 

Anderson, considered to be one of the nation’s leading urban ethnographers, has authored The Cosmopolitan Canopy: Race and Civility in Everyday Life (W. W. Norton & Company, 2011), Code of the Street (W. W. Norton & Company, 2000), and Streetwise (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1990), for which he was honored with the American Sociological Association’s Robert E. Park Award for the best published book in the area of urban sociology. 

Anderson’s visit is sponsored by Pitt’s Department of Sociology. For more information, call 412-648-7580. 

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