FOR MORE INFORMATION

CONTACT: Mary Anthony

mary.anthony@trinity.edu

Dec. 13, 2010

Cultural Anthropologist Marc Lamont Hill to Present Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Lecture at Trinity University

SAN ANTONIO – Trinity University will honor the late Martin Luther King Jr. with a public lecture and participation in a San Antonio march commemorating the slain civil rights leader.  The University’s annual MLK Jr. Commemorative Lecture will feature Marc Lamont Hill, one of the leading hip-hop generation intellectuals in the country, at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 19, in Laurie Auditorium on the Trinity University campus.  The event is free and open to the public. 

Hill’s work, which covers topics such as hip-hop culture, politics, sexuality, education, and religion, has appeared in numerous journals, magazines, books, and anthologies. He has lectured widely and provides regular commentary for media outlets such as NPR, Washington Post, Essence magazine, and The New York Times and has been a regular guest on CNN, MSNBC, and Larry King Live. In fall 2009, he joined the faculty of Columbia University as associate professor of education at Teachers College.

He is a founding board member of My5th, a non-profit organization devoted to educating youth about their legal rights, and works closely with the ACLU Drug Reform Project. In 2001, he started a literacy project that uses hip-hop culture to increase school engagement and reading skills among high school students. In 2005, Ebony magazine named Hill one of America’s top 30 black leaders under 30 years old.

Hill is the author of Beats, Rhymes, and Classroom Life: Hip-Hop Pedagogy, and the Politics of Identity and the co-editor of Media, Learning, and Sites of Possibility and The Anthropology of Education Reader. He is currently completing two manuscripts: Knowledge of Self: Race, Masculinity, and the Politics of Reading; and You Ain’t Heard It From Me: Snitching, Rumors and Other People’s Business in Hip-Hop America.

Trinity has honored the memory of King for decades and launched a speaker series in 1994.  Students affiliated with the Trinity Diversity Connection and members of the Black Student Union, University President Dennis Ahlburg and his wife, Penelope Harley, as well as Trinity faculty and staff members, will join other residents of San Antonio in the annual MLK Jr. March through the community’s East Side on Monday, Jan. 17.

For more information, contact Trinity’s Office of University Communications at 210-999-8441.

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