Identity & Computing Lecture Series: Technology, Culture, and the Reproduction of Inequality

Event Description

For trenchant cultural critic and leading sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom, the most pressing conversation about the ever-evolving role of technology in our culture is how people use it, how it shapes our lives, and how it inevitably reproduces inequality – from changing access to higher education to making the labor market more unequal. In this potent conversation, Dr. Cottom untangles the threads, offering personal and empirical insights that shift our thinking and spark innovation. This event is co-sponsored by the Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies department at Duke University.

Speaker Bio

Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom is a professor in the School of Information and Library Science and Principal Investigator in the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, NY Times opinion columnist, and 2020 MacArthur Fellow. Recent accolades include being named the 2023 winner of the Joseph B. and Toby Gittler Prize by Brandeis University for her “critical perspective and analysis to some of the greatest social challenges we face today.” McMillan Cottom’s most recent book, THICK: And Other Essays (The New Press 2019), won the Brooklyn Public Library’s 2019 Literary Prize and was shortlisted for the National Book Award in nonfiction.

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