Mack Lecture: Claudia Rankine: Notes on The White Card

Author of innovative and thoughtful texts on race, selfhood, and contemporary American life, Claudia Rankine is a powerful and influential cultural force. Join Rankine as she reads and reflects on her recently published play, The White Card, which unpacks the insidious ways racism manifests itself in everyday situations and questions how our society can progress if whiteness stays invisible.

Rankine is the author of five collections of poetry, including Citizen: An American Lyric and Don’t Let Me Be Lonely, two plays, and numerous video collaborations. She is also the editor of several anthologies including The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind. In 2016, she cofounded the Racial Imaginary Institute (TRII), which is “committed to the activation of interdisciplinary work and a democratized exploration of race in our lives.” Among her numerous awards and honors, Rankine is the recipient of the Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry, the Poets & Writers’ Jackson Poetry Prize, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, United States Artists, and the National Endowment of the Arts. She is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and teaches at Yale University as the Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry.

Don’t miss Rankine’s new performance with Will Rawls, What Remains, March 7–9, in the McGuire Theater.